Everybody Plays the Fool
by CharmedMummy
Summary: Sometimes you just have to take your turn playing the fool. And sometimes it feels like you're taking more than your share of turns. Part of my Everything Old is New Again series and follows We Can Work It Out.
1. Prologue

**AN: **Here it is, the story that follows We Can Work It Out, which was the story that followed Saturday in the Park in my Everything Old is New Again series. It's pretty essential to read those two stories before starting this one because otherwise you'll likely be lost with the characters and their respective backstories. If you haven't read all of the oneshots in this series, that's not a big deal, though some of them might be beneficial to your understanding of all of the dynamics between characters and whatnot.

Heed the rating on the story. I don't use them a lot by any means, but it is possible that a swear word will pop up here and there. Also, there will be some more mature leaning plot points, so if you're looking for fluff, this isn't really it.

Before I forget, thanks as always to my amazing beta, **Kerry Blue**. She's been especially helpful in developing this story and letting me bounce ideas off of her and that has been invaluable.

Finally, as always, the disclaimer: I do not own _CSI:NY_ or any of the characters and history from that show. I do not own the song "Everybody Plays the Fool" or the group whose version I was thinking of when I wrote the story, The Main Ingredient. You can also probably figure out other things that I don't own. All that is mine are some of the characters and the crazy situations I come up with to put them in. :)

* * *

_Late April, __San Diego, __California__…_

_Before the events of Saturday in the Park…_

"I can't believe you dragged me here on such a beautiful day! We could be at the beach or shopping or…"

Brandy Charles put a hand over her friend's mouth. "Stop. You told me I could pick the outing if I went with you to the opera and I picked this. So quit complaining. At the very least you can work on your tan if you can't bring yourself to pay attention."

"Pay attention to what? It's just a bunch of guys out on the grass right now. If you had to bring me to a baseball game, why did we have to come so early?"

She shouldn't have tried, but she had wanted to see one last Padres game before she moved and wanted to spend some time with her childhood friend Elise, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine the two things. But Brandy had forgotten how much her old friend looked down on things such as sports sometimes. As much as she loved her friend, the woman was a bit of a snob. "Why don't you try people watching or something? There's got to be a hot guy around here that you could flirt with."

"Well, I would think about that guy a couple rows in front of us if he wasn't in the military. Probably has an IQ of about twenty."

Brandy looked at the man in front of them that was wearing a blindingly white Navy uniform. "When has that ever stopped you before? And don't be so condescending, just because you're not a fan of the military doesn't mean that it's filled with idiots."

Elise rolled her eyes and flipped some of her blond hair back behind her shoulder. "You're going to start defending the military now? Sheesh, you really have gone over to the dark side."

Brandy reached back to put her own blond hair up in a ponytail. She and Elise might look a lot alike with their naturally blonde hair, but that was pretty much where the similarities ended. While she preferred to pull her hair back in a simple ponytail, most of the time her companion had to spend at least an hour in front of the mirror curling and crimping until her hair was perfect whether she was going to a club or a baseball game. And while Brandy was using her master's degree to go into forensic science and work with law enforcement, Elise was an artist who thought the world revolved mostly around her and who had an aversion to law enforcement and the military that she had inherited from her parents. Really the two of them should never have become friends, but Brandy supposed that stranger things had happened in the world. And as stuck up as she was, no one was more loyal of a friend than Elise and she had always been there when Brandy really needed her.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But you have to allow for at least the possibility that he could have a thought in his head."

"If he had ever had a thought, he probably had it drummed out of him in basic training. Besides, he looks like too much of a jock to be some smart guy just using the military to get a college education."

"Would you stop it? He's like, right in front of us."

Elise laughed. "It's not like he can understand us!" And it was unlikely that he knew what they were saying because they had been carrying on this entire conversation in Italian. Elise had gotten Brandy to take courses in the language when they were in college together and while she enjoyed knowing and using a foreign language, she didn't like using it to talk about someone behind their back.

"Just because he can't understand us doesn't mean we should insult him. We don't even know him."

"Whatever. I won't talk about the poor little sailor. Can I talk about the dumb jocks on the field then? Because at least their uniforms are a little more flattering to their figure."

Brandy smirked. "I knew there was a reason why you didn't put up too much of a fight about coming to the game. You just wanted to ogle cute guys in baseball uniforms, didn't you?"

"I admit that the possibility for that did cross my mind. Though ogling is about as far as I would take it with these guys. I don't hold much more hope for their intelligence than I do for Navy guy there." She sat up as she noticed one player who was jogging from his dugout towards some other players standing nearby their seats which were a few rows back from the third base line. "Though I might make an exception and have a one night stand with that one. Lack of intelligence doesn't mean he wouldn't be fun for a night."

Brandy was about to reply when the sailor in front of them turned and shocked the hell out of both the women. "Could you two possibly take your insults elsewhere? I didn't mind so much when you were just talking about me, I'm used to that from your type. But insulting my brother when you don't know anything about him goes a little far." It wasn't that he had turned and spoke to them that was so shocking. It was that he had apparently understood their words and had talked back to them in perfect conversational Italian.

The two women were speechless. What did you say in a situation like this when you had just been made a total fool of? The man noticed their discomfort and smirked. "Not so much fun when the tables are turned, is it?" He turned to the field and let out a sharp whistle. The baseball player that they had been discussing previously turned in their direction and smiled wide. He waved, finished his conversation with the man next to him, then jogged over to the wall between the field and the stands.

"Devon! I didn't know if you were going to make it. I called and left a message on your answering machine." The two men did that manly one-arm hug that guys do.

"Yeah, I got back yesterday and I thought I'd just show up. Some of the other guys are going to come with me to tomorrow's game, but I thought I would come today too. It's not like I have a long drive since I'm just over the bay."

"Sounds great. Hey, why don't you come out here and meet some of the guys. And I bet coach would let you sit in the dugout."

"Sure, but first I want you to meet a couple of people." Brandy knew her cheeks were beet red as the two men turned to look at her and Elise. "These two ladies were just talking about you and I thought they'd like to meet you. Ladies, this is my brother, Dominic Messer."

Dominic was giving his brother an odd look since he had started speaking in Italian but he smiled at the women and followed his brother's lead. "It's nice to meet you."

"Uh, yeah, nice to meet you, too." Brandy's brain wasn't working well at the moment, but she at least managed that much. Elise wasn't so lucky.

"You speak Italian?" she blurted. Brandy put a hand over her eyes. This whole situation was just perfect.

"Yeah," Dom said in a tone that implied he was a little unimpressed by the question. Of course he could speak Italian, he just had been speaking it to them. "Our father taught it to us. But I'm a little rusty since I don't get a chance to use it all that much. Devon on the other hand is a bit of a linguistics expert. How many languages do you speak now?" he asked, turning towards his brother. "Eight? Nine?"

Devon shrugged and grinned. "I don't know, I lost track."

A voice came from the direction of the visiting team's dugout. "Messer!"

Dominic looked over and held up a finger to let his coach know that he'd be right there. "Sorry ladies, gotta run. You coming, Devon?"

"Yeah. Goodbye, ladies. Or maybe that's not smart enough. How about arrivederci? Or maybe adiós? Or dosvidaniya?" When he didn't get a response he finally turned and hopped over the wall to join his brother on the field and they walked away.

"Well, that was interesting." Elise was understating things just a bit.

"That will teach us to assume things like that again I suppose." Brandy felt horrible about making such a bad impression on the guy. At the end there he was obviously mocking them, but there was something in his eyes that had gotten to her. Something that said he wasn't just annoyed at being insulted or having his brother insulted. It was almost…frustration, like he had run into people like them before and dealt with their prejudices towards the military. And sadness that he knew he couldn't change their opinions. And pride in who he was, damn the opinions of anyone who didn't like it. She got all of that from just the few seconds that her hazel eyes had locked with his deep brown ones and it was somewhat overwhelming. If the situation was different…but it wasn't and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She was moving next week and from what he said he was stationed in San Diego so it's not like they could have started anything meaningful.

But she wished she could at least have the opportunity to apologize to him. The conversation hadn't been entirely her fault, but she still felt bad about the whole thing. Oh well, she was sure he would forget about her soon enough.


	2. Chapter 1

**AN:** I really, really appreciate all of the response I have received for this story. Whether it's reviews, or people setting me or my story on their alerts, or just reading the story, or a combination of two or more of those things, it's all very much appreciated.

As always, thanks to **Kerry Blue**, and I don't own anything that obviously belongs to someone else. This chapter is a bit short, but there are going to be some really long ones ahead.

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_Early October, somewhere in the __Middle East__…_

_After the events of Saturday in the Park and We Can Work it Out…_

Devon jogged up to the waiting helicopter and got in as its rotors revved up to full speed. His blood was already pumping and they hadn't even lifted off yet, but then that was always the case when they headed out on a mission. This one wasn't anything too complicated, but he loved his job and he got an adrenaline rush even when it was just a training mission, so actually doing something real was even more of an excitement.

He did wish that this could have waited a few hours. He had been listening to his brother's playoff game while he played poker with his friends when they were called for the mission. The Cubs were playing in the fifth game of the best of five series. Whichever team won the game got to move on to the National League Championship Series and it had been the bottom of the third with the score tied at one when they got called away. Duty called and he couldn't exactly decline to go so he could listen to his brother's game. Not that he would skip out on a mission anyway. Dominic would understand.

Devon checked his weapon one more time as the helicopter lifted off the ground and headed out of the base. He was near one of the open side doors and so he saw the missile headed in their direction just before the alarms started going off in the helicopter. The pilot immediately started taking evasive action, but the missile had been shot too close for them to have much of a chance. The last thing Devon remembered was the sand coming too fast towards them before everything went black.

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_New York City, __New York__…_

"I come bearing gifts." Don Flack, Jr. held the bag in his hand in front of his niece's face, letting the smells from what was inside waft towards her nose and make her mouth water.

Ella quickly turned in her chair, her eyes wide and a happy smile on her face. "Is that what I think it is?"

"If you think it's the best roast beef in the city, then yes." Don grinned. "Slow day? You put that pen down like it burned you."

"You have no idea. Your phone call was a welcome distraction from a day of filling out paperwork." Don had called his niece to see if she could run a few names through her contacts and whatnot at the FBI for him. Even in this day and age, information sharing between agencies, especially at different levels like between a city and the federal government, wasn't perfect and he thought getting some information from the FBI could be useful. But he could have gotten that information several other ways. Being in law enforcement as long as he had been, he had of course gained a few friends in the federal system over the years, even if they did have a friendly rivalry.

But the situation had provided a perfect excuse to stop in and see his niece, so he had called her and offered to bring her lunch in exchange for the information. Mac had planned on coming as well, but had gotten called away at the last second. Don hadn't gotten much time with his niece since she moved back to New York, so he was looking forward to the meal and had picked up something that he knew his niece would enjoy before he headed over to the FBI's New York City field office.

"Let's go into the break room," Ella said as she stood, picking up a folder on the corner of her desk. "I did find some information on the names you gave me, but it wasn't much." She talked as she led him to a fairly utilitarian room with glass walls that consisted of a fridge, a couple of cabinets over a sink, a coffeepot on the counter, and a few tables with chairs. They settled at one of the tablesand Don pulled out their lunch as Ella grabbed some napkins.

Just a couple of bites into their meal, as they were discussing how down Dominic was after losing the night before, ending his playoff run, and Don was ignoring the teasing gleam in Ella's eye that said she could guess who was likely comforting Dom today, a woman burst into the room and interrupted their conversation. "Agent Messer! Thank goodness I found you."

"What's up, Brandy?" Ella wiped her mouth as the blonde woman approached their table obviously filled with some kind of excitement. "And you can call me Ell, remember?" She turned to her left slightly. "Oh, and this is my Uncle Don. He's with the NYPD. Uncle Don, this is Brandy Charles, she does ballistics analysis for us."

The woman smiled. "Hi, nice to meet you." She quickly turned her attention back to Ella and Don might have been insulted except that he recognized the hyper attitude. The young woman obviously had something important that she just couldn't wait to get out. "You're never going to believe this. I was going to run this by my supervisor, but he's gone for that conference and I just thought you would want to know about this right away." She handed the folder in her hands over to Ella. "I mean, I know I'm just a lowly lab tech, but I know I did everything right. I double and triple checked this and it came up the same every time and-"

"Whoa, slow down there, it's fine Brandy. I know you do good work and that you'll be moving up in the world soon enough." Don watched as Ella opened the file, her eyes widening fairly quickly. She looked up sharply at the tech who had brought her the information. "Am I reading this right? One of these guns is connected to the shooting of an agent?"

"Not just one of them, _all three of them_. Or, at least two of them do, the third is connected to the shooting of a cop in Baltimore. All three cases have been cold for over a decade or solved and someone put in prison without the murder weapon being recovered."

That caught Don's attention. He scooted over and looked at the file. "Where did you get these guns?" he asked his niece.

"In a raid the other day. We got an anonymous tip that some guys we had been looking for were holed up in an apartment in Queens. We went in without much fuss, they weren't expecting us at all. We found the guns under a bed but the guys in the apartment claimed that they weren't theirs." She put the file down on the table and he could see the wheels turning in her head. "No fingerprints were on the guns, but we just figured they had wiped them down. But these guys aren't all that smart. I think they have trouble remembering to wipe their asses let alone thinking to wipe down their guns. So what if they were set up? They would have been kids when some of these cop shootings took place, I highly doubt they would have had anything to do with them."

Don was about to reply when something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. "Hey, what is the Navy doing here?"

Ella looked up just in time to catch another agent pointing the uniformed men towards the break room. Her face drained of color and Don furrowed his brow. "Ella? What's wrong?"

"I hope to God it's nothing," was all she said before the men entered the room. Ella stood and Don followed suit.

"Agent Daniella Messer?" the older, taller one asked.

"Is he alive?" Don was confused at her question and then it clicked. _Devon._

"As far as we know, yes, Petty Officer Devon Messer is still alive." The man was thankfully willing to just be blunt and give it to them straight. "Your brother's helicopter was shot down late this morning his time, but as far as we know he was alive and stable enough to be transferred to better facilities in Germany. I'm sorry we weren't here sooner, things were a little chaotic after the attack. Due to that delay and because we wanted to make sure we informed you of what had happened before you saw it on the news, we came here without a lot of details."

"That's okay." Don watched as his niece regained some of her usual control. He touched her arm just to remind her that she wasn't alone. She glanced at him and Don knew the fear in her eyes matched what was likely in his own. "Is there a number in Germany I can call to get an update?" The Navy officials gave her that information and some other details and then turned to leave when Ella assured them that she would inform the rest of Devon's family and didn't need their assistance. They left their cards just in case and told her to call anytime if she needed any help in getting to Germany or contacting Devon's doctors.

When they were gone, Don turned to his niece, but she had already anticipated his first question. "Devon made me his emergency contact so that if something happened to him, Mom and Dad wouldn't have to see the car pull up and the official guys walking to the door. He wanted them to hear about it from someone they knew and I offered to be it. He wasn't enamored with that idea because he didn't think I should have to go through this either, but I insisted." She put a hand to her mouth. "But I…I never really thought I would actually have to go to Mom and Dad and tell them that something had happened. I mean, I know his job is dangerous, but I still didn't think…" When she couldn't go on, Don pulled her into an embrace.

"Everything is going to be fine, you'll see. They said Devon is alive and if there's one thing I've learned about the Messers over the years, it's that they aren't easy to get rid of." He felt his niece chuckle through her tears. They stood there a little longer before breaking apart and discussing how to tell the family, deciding to head straight to the crime lab to tell Danny and Lindsay and to try and reach as many members of the family as they could on the way to have them meet up there. Neither of them noticed as the ballistics tech quietly left the room.


	3. Chapter 2

**AN:** Continued thanks to those who are reading and to my beta, and continued disclaimer that I don't own a lot of this. See the first chapter for more details on that.

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_Later in October, New York City…_

She had no idea what she was doing here. This was insane. She had no real connection to this family. And yet here she was, heading down the hallways of the VA hospital with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

She told herself that it was just the right thing to do for a colleague. And she _had_ circulated a card among the other lab techs that knew Agent Messer to let her know that they hoped everything with her brother turned out okay.

But that was just a cover and she knew it. Ever since she had connected the dots and figured out everything, she knew that she just had to try and make amends in some small way for that April day all those months ago.

Brandy didn't know why it hadn't clicked before now. She didn't work closely with Agent Messer very much, but she had met the woman and talked to her a few times. And yet somehow Brandy had never managed to connect the agent's last name to that of the baseball player from that April game whose brother was in the Navy and had been sitting in front of her and Elise. Brandy knew she was really, really bad at remembering names, but she didn't feel like that excused her idiocy. Added to that was how horrible she had felt ever since April about the bad impression she must have given the sailor and his brother. She had been left wishing ever since that there was some way she could apologize. But what could she do? Send a letter to Dominic Messer and ask him to relay her apologies to his brother? Address a letter to just "Mr. Messer, care of the United States Navy"?

Well, now she had been presented with a way to try and make amends. Office gossip was no different in the law enforcement community than anywhere else- actually, it was likely more detailed and prevalent there than in your average workplace- and the FBI office had been buzzing about Agent Messer and her family for the last couple of weeks. Apparently many in the office knew one or more members of the Messer family and so were personally interested in what was going on with Petty Officer Devon Messer.

From Sally, the DNA tech, Brandy knew that the Petty Officer had been in a coma since the helicopter crash. From Brad, an agent who flirted with her sometimes when he came to get ballistics results, she knew that Devon Messer had been flown back to the U.S. a few days ago when he was deemed stable enough to make the trip.

And so here she was, delivering flowers and a card ostensibly on the behalf of the lab technicians at the FBI's NYC field office. As she knocked on the door that she had been directed to by the receptionist in the lobby, she took a deep breath. She would drop the flowers off, make a quick getaway and get back to her work. In and out, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

"Come in." She pushed open the door at hearing those words. Inside the room was a veritable garden. She guessed she should have expected that. From what she had been hearing lately, there were a lot of connections to the Messer family and a lot of them probably sent flowers. It's just what you did for someone you knew who was in the hospital and you didn't know what else to send.

But the flowers couldn't make the hospital room any less depressing when the prominent focus of the space was the bed with the pale young man lying on it, his eyes closed in a slumber that had been going on for more than two weeks now. She almost couldn't believe the man lying there was the same one who had talked back to her in Italian and looked so alive in his Navy uniform. Now he was just a shadow of the man she remembered, clothedin a flimsy hospital gown and so still that without the beeping of the machines attached to him one wouldn't know if he was alive or dead.

Sitting in a chair next to the bed was the man who Brandy had been briefly introduced to when she had walked into the break room that fateful day, right before Agent Messer received the news about her brother. _What was his name? John? Ron?_

"Hi," she started. "I, uh, just wanted to bring these by, but I guess there isn't much room in here." She paused and nervously pulled at her jacket. "Sorry, I guess I should introduce myself. My name's Brandy Charles, I work over at the FBI with Agent Messer."

The man stood and seemed to consider her. "I think I remember you. Ballistics tech, right?"

She blushed. She hadn't expected him to remember her and she felt bad that she couldn't remember his name. She could rattle off the characteristics of just about any gun out there, but for some reason names just flew out of her head, often at the most inopportune times. "Uh, yes, that would be me. We met a couple of weeks ago."

"Yeah." He looked around. "I think we've got a little room over there on the window ledge." He took the flowers she had been holding and managed to work them in with the others just barely. "We've been rotating them, sending the older ones out to other parts of the hospital as new ones come in," he mentioned.

"That's nice," she replied. "Oh, I almost forgot! There's a card from some of the lab techs." She dug through her bag and came up with the blue envelope. She held it out to the man and he took it and set it on a pile on the table next to the bed.

"Thanks." The man wearily ran a hand through his hair. "Would you like to take a seat? It's my turn for a shift here with Devon and I find that I'm not very good at talking to himsince I don't get any kind of response."

"Um, okay." Well, there went her plans for a quick escape. She sat on the other chair in the room, across the bed from the older man. They sat there for a few moments and finally she decided to come clean. "I'm sorry, I remember your face, but I can't seem to recall your name."

The man smirked. "Don Flack." He looked down at the younger man on the bed again. "And this here would be my nephew, Devon Messer."

"We've met." She slapped a hand over her mouth. She really, really hadn't meant to let that slip out.

Don Flack raised an eyebrow at her. "You've met Devon? Was it when he was in New York a few months ago?"

"Uh, no." He was probably referring to that big dust up in Central Park a few months back. Brandy had known that it involved an agent in their office. Later she had been told that it was Agent Messer that was the one in the middle of the whole thing, but Brandy hadn't paid much attention to the story at the time. She was too new in her job when that was all going on and determined to make a good impression, so she was working as much overtime as possible. Any spare moments were spent reading her favorite books to help her unwind rather than keeping up with the news.

The man cocked his head to the side and motioned with his hand in a gimmee gesture. "Spit it out, Ms. Charles."

She sighed. "I met him at a Padres game about six months ago. I'm from that area and a lifelong Padres fan. He was sitting a couple of rows in front of me and a friend of mine. We were, um, talking in Italian and Devon started talking with us in that language."

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Don studied the young woman in front of him. There was obviously more to the story. She seemed very embarrassed to be telling him about it and so far she hadn't said anything that she deserved to be embarrassed about. "Interesting coincidence then that you ended up working with his sister."

She seemed relieved that he had taken the conversation in that direction. "Yeah, though I didn't realize it till the other day. I don't know why, I should have connected the last name, but I guess that's me being bad with names again."

Flack smiled to put the girl more at ease. She seemed nice enough, just a little nervous and jittery. He hadn't gotten that impression from her at all when he met her at the FBI office, but he supposed she was more confident in her work environment where she knew what she was doing. God knew he had worked with enough lab geeks over the years who were much more confident in the lab than they were out of it. "So, you're a Padres fan living in New York City. I'm betting you haven't met too many other San Diego fans here."

She chuckled and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. "No, I'm the only one in the entire city as far as I can tell. Though maybe there are others who are just as scared as I am to admit that I'm not a Yankees or Mets fan."

"Yeah, the city is pretty loyal to their teams. In our family Mac was the only one who followed a team outside of the city until Dominic made it to the majors. And since the other team that Mac followed was the Cubs since he's originally from Chicago, it worked out well for him that Dom plays for them."

"I bet. The Cubs were really lucky when they got him. Selfishly I kind of wish he had been drafted by the Padres." She grinned. "I'll admit, I didn't appreciate his homerun against my team the last time I was at the ballpark."

Don laughed. "We hear that a lot. 'We love Dominic, but did he have to make that awesome place against the Mets?' And the poor guy gets it from all sides whenever he comes back to the city." Flack leaned back in his chair, reclining as much as was possible in the horrible plastic thing the hospital provided. "Was that at the game where you met Devon?"

She blushed "Uh, yeah. Devon actually briefly introduced my friend and I to Dominic, but we, uh, didn't get much of a chance to talk before they, um, left." Don was about to push, very intrigued at why this woman seemed so embarrassed, when a voice spoke and distracted him completely from that line of questioning.

"I don't know that your friend…would have wanted to talk anymore…with me anyway," the voice croaked, and Don whipped his head around to find his nephew's eyes open for the first time in weeks.

"Devon!" Flack quickly got out of his chair and bent over the bed. "Damn, son, you had us worried there for awhile."

"Sorry…bout that…" Devon was obviously getting used to talking again, especially with his broken ribs that were taped up and probably keeping him from being able to breathe easily. "What…what happened?"

Don reached over to push the call button to summon the medical personnel. "Do you remember anything?"

"I remember…I remember the game you guys were talking about…" Devon's eyes shifted back and forth between his uncle and the blonde woman on the other side of the bed. "Did I…get hit by a car or something?" He seemed to get worried about something. "Is Dominic okay?"

"Dominic? Yeah, he's fine. Why are you worried about him?"

"Because…last thing I remember…is being with Dom…at the ballpark…" He looked around the room. "Where are Mom and Dad? I mean…I'm happy to see you too, Uncle Don…but I would have only expected them…to make the trip all the way out here…to California…"

Don grew concerned. "You're not in California, Devon. You're in New York." Things were starting to become clear, though more worrisome. "Devon, what day do you think it is?"

"I don't know…April something, right?" Flack did his best to not give anything away, but he must have not been entirely successful, and then Devon just confirmed his fear by looking over at the lab tech who had put a hand over her mouth. "Why?...What day is it, Uncle Don?"

Flack sighed. It's not like they could lie to him, he would find out eventually. "It's late October, Devon. And you're not here because of a traffic accident; you were in a helicopter crash in the Middle East."

"What?" Don's heart almost broke at the fear in his nephew's eyes. He only hoped that the doctors would tell them this was temporary, that Devon's memory would come back. No one in their family did well with losing control, and Devon had enough to worry about with his physical injuries without being concerned that he had forever lost six months of his life. And the poor boy had yet to hear that his injuries could possibly be extensive enough to keep him permanently away from the job he loved.


	4. Chapter 3

**AN:** Continued thanks, continued disclaimers, see earlier chapters for more details on that. I am no medical expert and I have no personal knowledge of how the military works, so please bear with me if I'm slightly off on a few of those kind of details. On to what I know you're more interested in...

* * *

_Early November, New York City…_

"I really appreciate this," Devon said as he carefully got into the SUV.

"You had better. After the conversation I just had with Mom, I'm expecting a really awesome wedding present." Devon had needed to get out of his parents' house for a little while to maintain his sanity and had co-opted his sister's help. Ana was the one everyone went to when you needed to talk people into something.

"Oh, I've been all over your registry. It's not like I have anything else to do these days." He tried to not sound bitter. It wasn't his family's fault that a terrorist had shot down his helicopter and injured him badly enough to put him on indefinite leave from the Navy. But there was only so much time cooped up in a hospital or a house that he could take when he was used to running for miles, lifting weights and swimming pretty much every day.

He supposed he should be thankful to even be able to walk just a couple of weeks out of the hospital, albeit with a hell of a limp. The rehab people he worked with kept trying to tell him how lucky he was. His entire left side had been pretty beat up, indicating that was where he had landed, though he still had no memory of the event. In fact, he still had failed to recall anything since last April. But for now he was trying to not worry too much about the memory loss. His injured hip, cracked and broken ribs, and dislocated shoulder that had his left arm still in a sling were enough to deal with. At least it was only six months worth of memories he had lost and not years.

Devon winced as the car went through a pothole. The pain was intense when he got jostled the wrong way, but he wasn't about to let Ana see him in pain. If he did, she wouldn't hesitate to turn around and take him back. He knew he wouldn't be able to hide his pain from Ella when they met up with her, but that was another reason besides her persuasion abilities that he had called Ana to ask her to pick him up. Ella could read almost anyone at a glance and Devon was no exception, so she wouldn't have even let him get out of the house. He was hoping that once they were already at the FBI office she would figure it was too late to say, or at least do, anything.

They were meeting Ella and Dominic at the FBI office before the four siblings went out to lunch. It had been a long time since just the four of them did something together, and it would likely be the last time they managed it before Ana got married in a few weeks and they officially welcomed Jack into the family. With Dom back together with Kaile and Ella and JD looking pretty serious, Devon was starting to feel a little left out. It had never really bothered him before that he couldn't really ever sustain a long romantic relationship since he was constantly moving and traveling wherever the Navy felt like sending him. But all this downtime was getting to him on multiple levels, and the lack of companionship from someone outside of his family was one of those levels. He wasn't even communicating with his friends much since he was being allowed to recuperate and rehab in New York rather than California. And most of his friends were in his unit anyway and still over in the Middle East. He was grateful that none of his friends had been as injured as he was and were able to stay on the job, but it left Devon cursing his luck.

"We're here." Devon looked up and realized that they had in fact reached their destination. He and Ana moved slowly into the building and then the elevator, her steps changing to match his without making it seem like he was holding her back, though he still noticed and felt self-conscious. He tried to not let the looks he got at the security gate get to him when the agents just waved him by after he pinged the metal detector. They were obviously all aware of how he had gotten some metal put in him for his injuries and it was a little disconcerting to know that everyone knew all about his situation. Just one of the few downsides to being in his particular family.

As they walked out into the bullpen where Ella worked, Devon once again ignored the stares. That became easy once he became aware of a certain woman who was standing near his FBI sister. _Brandy Charles_. It was one of those weird twists of fate that she was one of the last things he could remember. And maybe that was why she no longer annoyed him, because she was something he could hold on to and tell himself that he _wasn't_ losing his mind, that he _could_ remember things. It helped that she had been much nicer the day he woke up than the day they had first met. He hadn't seen her since coming out of his coma and all of a sudden he was struck by how nice she looked. Shaking his head, he slowly walked forward with Ana. Obviously prolonged isolation from human contact outside of his family and the rehab people had scrambled his brain a bit.

He swung his gaze towards Ella and felt himself tense up at almost the same time Ana did next to him. She obviously caught on that Ella did not look happy. In fact, she looked downright grim and it seemed to be focused at Ana. "What?" the older of his sisters asked as they came to stand with Ella and Brandy. "You can't be angry at me for bringing Devon up here, you knew he was coming."

"No, it's not that." Ell hesitated. "Devon, I know you've got decent clearance because of your special operations work…"

"I won't be insulted if you need me to walk away for a minute," he told her. "I know you can't just talk about investigations with anyone you feel like."

Ell sighed. "I might as well tell you. It's likely that it will get out eventually anyway."

"What will get out?" Ana asked. "You're starting to worry me a bit here."

"You remember that case I was telling you about the other day? How we've gotten several anonymous tips that keep leading us to these places where we uncover weapons that were involved in the deaths of law enforcement officers?"

"Yeah, so? Wait, has one tied to the family?"

"Sort of." Ell handed her twin a folder. "Brandy has been rushing everything that comes in on this case and she just identified another gun we recovered as being linked to a case from Texas." Devon looked over Ana's shoulder and perused the ballistics results. It took him a second, but then the name jumped out at him. _Officer Brad Dent_.

Ana's head shot up. "You found the weapon that killed Jack's _father_?"

This was huge. Devon only knew the basics of the background of his sister's fiancé and soon to be husband. Jack's dad, a state cop in Texas, had been shot and killed in the line of duty when Jack was a kid. His mother had also been in law enforcement and soon after her husband's death, she had gone federal and moved Jack to D.C. Devon couldn't remember what agency she worked for, but he thought he remembered that she was fairly high up in the ranks of whichever one it was.

"Oh my god, I have to call Jack." Ana looked worried, obviously not relishing bringing up this painful part of the past for the man she loved. "How the hell did you find this? The guy they thought killed Jack's dad is dead and gone, he went down in a shootout with cops when they tried to arrest him for the murder. They never found the murder weapon and just figured it wasn't going to ever be found."

"I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what's going on." And Devon could tell how much that bugged his sister. "It's like someone out there is taunting us. Or sending us a message, or maybe this is some weird attempt to atone for sins by closing these cases. Whatever the reason, they've stockpiled all these weapons from cases involving law enforcement and now they're practically gift wrapping them for us. And we've yet to find a connection between all the victims beyond their profession. They're from different agencies, local, state and federal, different states, different ethnicities, everything. It's insane."

"I think they're sending a message." The Messer clan all turned to face Brandy Charles, having pretty much forgotten she was standing there.

"What makes you say that?" Ell asked. From some people that might have been a condescending question, a placating gesture to someone who wasn't a cop, but Ell obviously respected the blonde woman's opinion. And if Ell respected her, that went a long way towards making Devon feel like he wasn't being irrational when he had adjusted his opinions of Brandy from what he had initially thought of her back in April.

"Because these weapons weren't just called in to us, they were, like you said, gift wrapped. Some had the serial numbers taken off, but I'm thinking that was done by the original owner and not whoever is giving them to us now. But even without those numbers, the guns have been ridiculously easy to confirm as the murder weapons in all of these cases because they have been kept in great condition. I'm talking pristine here. Someone has not only been stockpiling these weapons, but has been taking care of them over the years, periodically taking them out and cleaning them so that they don't rust or anything. It's like someone had a plan for these guns all along."

Before they could all contemplate that thought, Dominic walked up with his phone to his ear and it looked like he was about to add on to the bad news. Ell waved off the agent who had escorted Dominic upstairs while Dom finished his phone call. "Yeah, okay, Dad, I hear you, but I _am_ coming. I'll see you there." He shut his phone and then looked anxiously at his siblings. "Dad called me while I was on my way up in the elevator. There's been some kind of shootout at a warehouse." He gave them the location that he had written on his hand. "Details are sketchy, but Dad wanted to give me a heads up. Apparently Kaile had called in her location to dispatch from there just before the shooting started." He focused on Ella. "For whatever reason, JD and Scagnetti were with her."

Nobody moved for a moment. "Okay," Ana said, "let's go. Devon-"

"Is coming with." He met the looks of his three older siblings without flinching. He had learned how to not back down from them a long time ago. Being eight years younger than the twins and ten years younger than Dominic meant that they would have walked all over him if he had let them. Well, at least more than they had. "Arguing will only slow us down. I know you could easily outpace me right now, but if you leave me behind you know I'll just grab a cab and follow. Do you want me to squeeze myself into a taxi, or do you want to be able to keep an eye on me?" Dom, Ana and Ella all shared a look and Devon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Being the baby of the family could really get old sometimes.

"Fine," Ana said, coming to an unspoken agreement with the other elder Messer children. "But you and Dominic stay in the car until we know for sure the place is secure, okay?" Devon nodded. "And by the way," she continued, poking a finger lightly to his chest, "now you owe me _two_ awesome wedding presents."


	5. Chapter 4

**AN:** Sorry for the delay. I've had a bit of writer's block combined with a lack of time and energy to write, but I do have some more that I can give you and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't. So, for those of you who have let me know that you've been going crazy without the next chapter, here it is. Enjoy!

Disclaimers and thanks still apply. Also, just so you know, there's a bit of swearing. I don't write with swear words very much, but I don't think I can keep it completely out of the story considering the occupations of these characters. :)

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Don sped through the city streets like a madman. He didn't feel like he had taken a breath since he had gotten the call from someone he knew at dispatch who thought he should know about the situation. Dammit, why hadn't he encouraged his daughter back when she was seven and expressed an interest in being a ballerina when she grew up? Back then the thought of attending numerous ballet recitals had made him break out in a cold sweat, but now he knew the error of his ways. As proud as he was of his daughter, he could do without the heart attacks she gave him.

In fact, he was barely recovered from the last one. He still felt a tightening in his chest when he caught sight of the scars on her wrists that had faded somewhat but were still easily visible. More than once he had awakened in the middle of the night drenched in his own sweat after a nightmare where he saw again the image of Dominic carrying his daughter, her limp body looking like it was already too late. And in his dream, just like the day that Kaile's mother had been shot, it was too late.

He just prayed that today wouldn't be his nightmare come to life. Don didn't have any specific information, all he knew was that dispatch had lost contact with Kaile, JD and Scagnetti after shots were reported fired. That could mean anything, and he hoped that all it would end up being was a case of the three detectives running after a perp and concentrating on that rather than calling in their actions like protocol dictated they should. He would take all of his daughter's glares and eye rolling for him showing up at her scene as long as she was okay.

Flack brought his car to a screeching halt, barely remembering to put it in park before he threw open the door and climbed out. He spotted Scagnetti and headed in that direction, but the detective spotted him and pointed towards a nearby ambulance. There she was, sitting calmly on the back of the ambulance, talking to the EMT as he patched her up. Don's relief at seeing his daughter relatively unscathed and awake and talking was so strong that he nearly fell to his knees. And then it registered that she was hurt and he suddenly wanted to know who the bastard was that had dared to harm his little girl.

"Kaile!" he shouted as he hurried over to his daughter. She looked up and smiled wearily at him. He wanted to take her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, that he would take care of it all, but he knew he couldn't do that. He respected her too much for that, and while he knew she wasn't embarrassed by him or anything, there were too many law enforcement personnel around and Don refused to give any of them a reason to think badly of his daughter. She had worked too hard to get where she was on her own merit with the legacy he had saddled her with, so instead of hugging her tight, he settled for gripping the arm that wasn't being worked on and resorted to bluster and sarcasm to get him through the emotions of the moment. "What the hell did you get yourself into this time?"

His daughter rolled her eyes just like he expected her to, though he could tell she was more miffed at the situation than at him. "A royal clusterfuck is what it is. I was following up on a tip and I brought JD and Scags with me because I didn't want to approach a warehouse on my own. Turns out we stumbled into a DEA raid and I think I got hit by friendly fire. Did you know about the operation?"

"No, but I damn well should have." Now that he didn't have to worry about Kaile he was able to notice more about their surroundings. More and more NYPD vehicles were pulling up and letting out patrol officers and anyone else who had been in the area, but they were still outnumbered by the DEA agents walking around in their windbreakers or Kevlar vests with the yellow letters of their agency on the back. It of course wasn't required that the DEA let the NYPD know about everything they did, but it was common courtesy to notify the NYPD brass about an operation as big as this one obviously was so a situation just like this could be avoided.

Before Don could question his daughter further, a striking woman approached. He guessed that she was about his age, maybe a few years younger, and by her demeanor he gathered that she was in charge of the federal troops and therefore responsible for this whole debacle. Perfect, he wouldn't have to go searching for someone to yell at.

She glanced at Don, but then turned her attention to Kaile. "You okay, Detective?" the woman asked her.

"Just peachy. Nothing like a bullet to the arm to brighten my day." Don tried not to grin. His daughter followed in his footsteps in more ways than one.

"Good. Then you want to tell me why you waltzed into our operation and almost compromised months of work?" the woman returned, folding her arms and bracing her legs apart as if settling in for an interrogation.

Who the hell did she think she was? "Excuse me? Would you like to tell me why your people were so inept that they couldn't distinguish between good guys and bad guys?" Don knew he should let his daughter fight her own battles, but he just couldn't help it. Besides, he could later say that it was his duty as a Deputy Chief to stand up for the NYPD in this kind of situation. It was a weak defense, but he could make it work.

The woman turned toward him and he stepped away from the ambulance to square off with her. "I don't know who you are, but this mess is not our fault. And if we hadn't been here, it likely would have been a lot worse because the NYPD obviously doesn't teach observational skills at the academy."

"Oh, that's rich. You shoot one of our detectives and it's somehow our fault? They must teach bullshitting 101 at _your_ academy." And they were off to the races and not one person in the vicinity dared break into the argument. Not that they would have noticed if anyone had tried. It eventually took a loud, sharp whistle in their ears to get them to break off and notice that they had gained a crowd.

CSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINY

Devon tried not to groan as they hit a dip in the road. He really didn't want to get another glare from his siblings, specifically Ella. She probably would have chewed him out if she hadn't been distracted by the radio squawking out the all clear. They all listened as dispatch let everyone know that the situation at the warehouse had been pretty much contained and that the detectives were alive and accounted for. Ana had immediately slowed the SUV to a more reasonable speed. Devon thought his brother was starting to get some color back in his cheeks, though he would likely not be fully recovered until he could see Kaile in person.

"Damn," Ana bit out as they rounded the last corner and came to a quicker than desired stop because the entire thoroughfare was clogged with law enforcement vehicles. Devon let loose with a few of his own expletives as the seatbelt cut painfully into him.

Ella was out of her seat and had opened Devon's door before he could completely catch his breath. "Do we need to take you over to one of those ambulances?" she asked without a trace of sympathy in her voice. Devon knew that was because she was still annoyed that he had made the trip despite the obvious pain he was in, but he could see the concern in her eyes too and he felt bad about that even while not being sorry that he had come along.

"No, I'm fine." He awkwardly reached over to undo his seatbelt. It had been beyond annoying to have to have Dom buckle it for him and Devon was bound and determined to at least get himself out. He finally managed that and made it out of the SUV. By the time he and Ella joined Dominic and Ana at the front of the vehicle, Scagnetti and JD had spotted them and walked over.

"Word on the grapevine travels fast," Scagnetti commented as JD went over to Ella to speak quietly to her. Devon tried not to listen as JD assured Ella that he was fine. To that end he focused back in on Scagnetti. "Your parents got here a couple minutes ago. They're over there trying to get through to your Uncle Don, but they're not having any luck."

"Why, what's wrong with Uncle Don?" Dominic asked as they all scanned the swarm of people for their family.

"Can't you hear it? He's been erupting like a volcano ever since he got here. Not that I blame him, this is a screw-up of epic proportions. I would have yelled at the woman myself if she wasn't some muckety muck who could probably get me busted back down to patrol. But she's giving as good as she gets from Don, I'll give her that."

Devon finally spotted what Scagnetti was talking about, though that was only because his Uncle Don was taller than most of the people around him. Before he could spot his parents, Devon heard Ana breathe, "Shit" and take off in the direction of their uncle. The rest of them shared bewildered looks before following after her.

When they joined Ana at the edge of the crowd watching the shouting match, it was obvious she was having about as much luck as their parents in getting through to Uncle Don. She actually reached for her weapon at one point and emptied it of rounds, probably intending to shoot into the air to get the attention of Don and the woman he was arguing with. Fortunately, Ella caught on to what her sister was doing and grabbed her arm and told her that firing her weapon, even without any bullets in it, was a really stupid thing to do considering all the law enforcement personnel around who were likely on edge due to the whole situation. That was when Ana stuck her fingers in her mouth and made the most ear-splitting sound Devon thought he had ever heard.

It had the desired effect. Uncle Don and the woman stopped arguing and turned towards Ana. Unfortunately, it also had the effect of getting everyone in the general vicinity to stop what they were doing and stare in their direction. Well, all those who weren't already watching the argument. But Devon didn't think Ana could care less at the moment about her audience, though he was still trying to figure out what had her in such a state about this. Ana usually had the coolest head out of all them. Most would guess Ella did since she was more stoic than her twin, but her temper ignited much more quickly than Ana's did. Ella just let hers boil inside until she was ready to let it out while Ana, once she was pushed to that point, would just let it out right away. And she had definitely been triggered by something, it just wasn't clear what that was.

"Ana? What the…?" Uncle Don was obviously just as oblivious as to what had caused such anger in Ana. And oh was she angry. Devon was off to the side of her and could see the daggers shooting out of her eyes.

But she just ignored her uncle's question. "Kaile, are you okay?"

Their cousin nodded. "Yeah, it's just a flesh wound."

"Wait, you know her?" asked the woman Uncle Don had been arguing with. And now all of them were confused. She knew Ana?

"Yes, he knows me," Ana bit out in a tone Devon didn't think he had ever heard from her. "Uncle Don, I would like you to meet my future mother-in-law, Deborah Dent. Deb, this is my uncle, Donald Flack, Jr., and that woman sitting on the back of the ambulance is my cousin and his daughter, Kaile Flack." Ana swept the two formerly arguing people who were now wearing identical shocked and embarrassed faces with her fierce, angry gaze. "And to answer your question, Uncle Don, of 'What the fuck?' I thought it might be nice to stop your argument before it went any further and you caused a rift between our families before I even get married!" Silence met her words.

After a few more moments of silently glaring, Ana pivoted and headed for her vehicle, ignoring shouts of her name from various members of their family. Dominic chased after her and tried to talk to her, but to no avail. Devon didn't think she even said a word to their brother before she climbed into her SUV, turned the ignition and made a quick three point turn before squealing her tires in her need to flee the scene quickly. Devon turned back towards the ambulance to find Ella already on the phone to Jack, giving him a quick rundown of the situation so that he could find Ana and calm her down.

Devon watched as his uncle groaned and leaned back against the open door of the ambulance, rubbing his face with his hand. He didn't envy his uncle one bit at the moment. Though he did almost laugh out loud when he thought about how Ana could turn this into another opportunity to get a good wedding present. His sister was going to have everything on her registry and then some at this rate.


	6. Chapter 5

**AN:** I appreciate everyone's patience on this story. I'm hammering it out as best I can and I am determined to finish it in the relatively near future. For now, here is another chapter for you. Thanks to all of you who are reading and/or reviewing and as always, thanks to my beta and friend, **Kerry Blue**. See the first chapter for disclaimers

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Don walked slowly down the hallway, dreading with every step what he knew he had to do. He hadn't thought there was anything that could get him to apologize to a Fed (at least one that wasn't family), but possibly ruining his niece's marriage before it even started was a hell of a reason.

He might have tried doing it last night if he hadn't felt the need to accompany Kaile to the hospital. After Ana stormed off, Agent Dent had walked away to deal with her people and Don had turned to Kaile and finally thought to get specifics about her injury. What he had thought was merely a graze because of her blasé attitude about it turned out to be a through and through. When the EMT gave up that information despite Kaile's glare, Don about went ballistic again. Fortunately the family was there by that point and kept the situation from getting worse, and along with Dominic, Flack got Kaile to agree to a ride to the hospital as long as it wasn't in the back of an ambulance. In the ER Mac informed him that he had better stay very, very far away from this whole situation for the foreseeable future less he start a cold war between the DEA and the NYPD.

Which was why Don hadn't told Mac or anyone else that he was going over to the DEA's New York City headquarters to talk to Agent Dent, hopefully in a much calmer voice this time. And damn it all to hell, Don was going to apologize. He still thought it was ultimately their fault that Kaile had been shot since Lindsay, working jointly with the DEA's crime scene people, let slip that the initial findings at the scene confirmed Kaile's suspicion that she had been shot by friendly fire. But when Don forced himself to be objective and honest about the situation, he admitted that raids could go sideways on even the best of law enforcement and that it was likely the DEA guys hadn't done anything wrong in the heat of the moment.

Which led to Don being here at just after eight o'clock in the morning. He wanted to get this done early in the day so that hopefully there would be fewer people around to witness his humiliation. If luck was with him, the woman wouldn't even be in yet and he could just write a note or leave a message with someone and then it would be established that he had extended the olive branch and that would be that.

But of course luck wasn't with him. He sighed as he rounded the corner with his escort from the desk downstairs to find Agent Dent standing in the hallway talking to another agent. She looked up, their gazes locked and Don felt like sparks flew through the air. As she broke away first to finish her conversation, Flack tried to mentally shake the feeling he had gotten. Surely that had just been residual energy from their fight the day before. Damn, but he was too old to do this.

Agent Dent finished her conversation and approached them. She waved off the escort, then faced Don with her arms folded and an eyebrow raised. "Something you still needed to say, Deputy Chief?" She had obviously done her homework on him if she knew his job title. Unfortunately, he hadn't had the time to do the same on her.

Don resisted the urge to wince at the ice in her gaze. She had perfected the look well. He had known few women who could do it any better. "Yeah. I wanted to apologize for jumping all over you yesterday and implying that your people were incompetent. I was, ah, on a bit of an adrenaline rush I guess you could say, and I let it get the best of me. Sorry."

She seemed to be assessing whether he meant what he said, and after a few moments relaxed as she apparently decided to believe him. "Apology accepted if you accept mine. I was upset about everything falling apart and I took it out on your daughter before knowing all of the facts." Don nodded. Well, that hadn't hurt as much as he had thought it would.

Dent glanced down the hallway, then back at Flack. "Why don't we take this into my office? I think we've had enough conversations in front of other people to last me a long time." Don looked around and realized there were several people doing a bad job of acting like they weren't watching what was going on. Not wanting an audience either, Don followed her into a little hole in the wall office. The room barely held a desk with one chair in front of it for visitors. Don squeezed between the desk and the chair while Dent closed the door and went behind the desk. Flack assessed the space and decided the only way he was going to be able to sit was if he angled the chair and put his legs in front of the door, so he did just that.

"Nice place you got here. Very cozy."

Dent took off her suit jacket and draped it over the back of her chair before sitting down. "It's a temporary space. I was offered other offices, but I didn't want to kick anyone out of theirs for the short time I was planning on being in New York. This was all they had open because someone had just transferred out, so I took it. I admit that I think this is the first time I've closed the door though because I'm not exactly fond of small, enclosed spaces."

Flack smirked. "I'm with you on that one." He crossed his legs, barely managing to do it and only because he rested his knee on the side of the desk. "So you aren't based out of New York? The family was a little vague on the details about you, even Danny and Lindsay."

"This would be the Royal family that I've heard so much about in the last day, right?" She smiled at Don's obvious embarrassment. "I hadn't realized my son was marrying in to such an important family until news of our little disagreement at the scene got out and everyone here in the office thought I should know about the details. You're the 'Prince' of New York, right?"

Don grimaced. If the reporter responsible for spreading that whole craziness beyond the NYPD wasn't halfway round the world spending his retirement in the south of France, Don would track him down this minute to strangle him. Maybe he would settle for strangling Scagnetti later since he was the one who really got the ball rolling with that whole mess. But for now Flack decided to ignore that whole subject. "You didn't answer my question."

"I would have thought Ana would fill you in," the woman returned, running a hand through her long, dark hair.

"She's not talking to anyone. Well, no one other than Jack that is. He called her parents to let them know he had found her, but neither has answered our calls since then. We're hoping she was able to cool off overnight."

Dent sighed. "Jack hasn't been answering my calls either. He sent me a text message saying that we would talk later." She picked up a pen and started twirling it in her fingers. "To answer your question, no, I'm not based in New York. I'm usually in D.C. since I'm the assistant to the Chief of Operations. But there was a credible lead on a guy I've been after since almost the beginning of my time in the DEA, so I asked to come here and oversee the operation. I knew I'd be stepping on a few toes, but I have too much invested in taking this guy down to care."

Flack could understand that. Heaven knew he wasn't above taking a personal interest in a case. But he was a little stunned at how high up she was in her organization. How had their family not really known anything about the mother of the man Ana was going to marry? It's not like she and Jack had just started dating. "You must have been in New York before now though. I'm surprised our family hasn't met you."

"And vetted me?" she asked with a smirk. Don just smiled. She sighed again before continuing. "To be honest, Jack and I…we're not close. We're not estranged or anything, but we're not close. I didn't even know he and Ana were dating until after they had moved in together and he called to let me know about his change in address. I probably wouldn't have met Ana before the wedding if she hadn't insisted on her and Jack coming out to D.C. after he proposed." She smiled as she looked off into the past, obviously remembering something. "I have to say, your niece is an impressive woman. I didn't know how I felt about Jack marrying someone in law enforcement since it hadn't been easy on his father and me both being on the job, but I didn't have any worries after meeting Ana. She's quite persuasive."

Don grinned. "That's our Ana. And if anyone could make a relationship work between two people in law enforcement, she can. Beyond her own personality, she had a hell of an example set by her parents who are both NYPD detectives, still happily together decades later."

Agent Dent cocked her head to one side as she leaned back slightly in her chair. "She talked a lot about her parents and siblings that weekend in D.C. I was actually supposed to meet her parents for dinner at some point before the wedding. But she only briefly mentioned the rest of her family. I know you're her uncle, but how exactly are you related?"

"What, you don't see the family resemblance?" Don smiled as he got out his wallet and pulled free a photo of the whole family. Most people these days had a virtual photo album in their phone or some other electronic device, but Don still preferred the old, more tactile method. This particular picture had been taken at the All Star game a few months previously since Lindsay and Tessa weren't about to lose the opportunity at one of the few times the entire family was actually in the same place. "That's all of us," he said as he handed her the picture. "The only blood relations are between immediate family members. Danny, Lindsay, Sheldon, Mac and I worked closely together a lifetime ago and as we got older and some of us started having kids we sort of just evolved into this close family. The kids call me their uncle, I call them my nieces and nephews and we watch out for each other. Most of us older adults had at the very least interesting, and at the most non-existent, relationships with our own blood relations for various reasons, so this became our primary family and it works for us."

She was going to say something when there was a knock at the door and it opened, though not very far before it hit Flack's legs. "Oh, sorry sir." The young agent looked at Agent Dent. "I just wanted to get this file to you since you said you wanted it ASAP."

"Yeah, thanks Williams." Don took the file and passed it over the desk, pretending not to notice how the kid seemed to take inventory of the room before backing out and shutting the door. He was probably making sure no blood had been spilled and would be reporting back to the others in the office.

Dent looked through the file, her eyes narrowing at what she read. "This is a detailed inventory of what we found in the warehouse yesterday with some preliminary findings. We got a lot of drugs: cocaine, heroin, you name it. Definitely a nice haul, though I would have appreciated nailing the bastard who funnels it into the country, too. But that's not the really interesting part." She looked up and passed the file over to Flack. "They haven't had time to test fire the guns they found yet, but they did run some serial numbers through the system and they've already got a hit. Apparently one of the guns was used to kill an undercover cop in Chicago a few months ago. Even more interesting, the reason that came up with just a serial number search is because the gun had been recovered and logged into the system, but then it disappeared from their evidence warehouse and they haven't been able to figure out how or why it was taken."

"Damn," Don breathed as he looked at the report. This couldn't be connected, could it? Maybe it was just a coincidence. But something in his gut was saying that it wasn't, that this was tied to the guns Ella had been getting tips on recently. Only now the creep was calling in tips to Kaile too, bringing in more of the family. And possibly drawing in Jack's mother on purpose as well. He looked up at the woman across the desk from him. "I'm starting to think this whole thing is bigger than we realized. Look, would you be willing to send these guns over to the FBI? My niece over there has something going on that could be connected and she's got a tech doing the ballistics who's pretty good and could maybe confirm if this is related or not."

Dent narrowed her gaze. "What are we talking about here? I'm willing to share information, but I don't know if I can turn over evidence. My guys were shot at and I don't think I can justify handing over things to the FBI. Maybe the NYPD since one of your own was hurt, but not the FBI."

Flack leaned forward. "I'm not talking about everything, and not even the guns that were used to shoot at your guys. If I'm right, this gun used in a cop killing and likely a few others weren't involved in the firefight and were hidden somewhere in the warehouse and only found during a later search. I'll even take you over there with the guns and explain on the way and you can watch the weapons as they're processed and bring them back when the tech is done. I just don't want to waste time on this because if I'm right, my family and yours could be in danger and that's not a risk I'm willing to take."

She tapped the pen in her hands against the desk a few times, mulling over the situation. He had to almost literally bite his tongue to keep himself from saying anything more. He really hoped that she went along with this, because otherwise he feared that he would get in another argument with her and they really didn't need that to happen. Though if he were honest, he wouldn't mind having it out with her again. In his experience, heated words often led to other, more pleasurable activities with a woman he was this physically attracted to. And where the hell had that thought come from?

"Okay," Dent said, breaking into Don's thoughts. He mentally shook himself, shoving those crazy musings to the back of his mind and concentrating again on what was important. "But you better be able to make good on your promise. The evidence comes back here at the end of the day."

"Not a problem, Agent Dent," Flack said as he stood.

"It's Deb," she said as she stood and put her suit jacket back on. "You might as well call me by my first name since we're going to kind of, sort of be related in a few weeks."

"That we are. And it's Don."

"Not 'Prince Don'?" she teased as she opened the door and walked out of the office.

Don groaned. "You're not going to let that go, are you?"

"Where would be the fun in that?" she said over her shoulder as she led the way to the evidence. Since she wasn't looking at him, Don just smirked and tried to resist the urge to check her out from behind. Maybe he wasn't too old for this after all.


	7. Chapter 6

**AN:** Sorry I haven't been good about updating. I know how annoying that can be. Hopefully this longer chapter should make up for that a little. :)

Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing. I specifically want to thank here those who send anonymous reviews because I only respond to those who sign in to FF, but I appreciate each and every review I get. I also want to thank my beta, **Kerry Blue**, who has graciously said she will continue to help me even though she has sworn off _CSI:NY_ due to recent developments. At least here she won't have to think about how a certain character's, well, character has been pretty much dismantled! :p

Sorry for that little rant. On with the story...

* * *

Brandy walked through the door of the pub and almost walked back out. When Agent Messer had suggested that Brandy meet her there, she thought it would just be the two of them talking about the news that Brandy had on the case. Instead it looked like she had been invited to join a group of people which wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn't there.

Shouldn't he be home? The man was still recovering from his injuries and obviously still in pain. And yes, assessing the current state of his health was totally why she was staring at him and almost missed Agent Messer waving her over to the table. Damn. Elise would be laughing her head off if she could see her now.

Brandy approached the corner booth that was crowded with people, most of whom she didn't recognize. Everyone shifted over on the curved seat so that Brandy could fit on the end, which of course put her right next to Devon Messer who was sitting in an armchair that had been pulled up to the table. She tried to pay attention as Agent Messer talked to her.

"Thanks for meeting me here, Brandy. I would have come to the office, but they refused to let me out," she said, glaring at the people on either side of her.

"You had just gotten here and you need to let yourself relax occasionally, Ella." Brandy recognized the woman who spoke as the one who had come with Devon to the FBI office the day before. "Hi, I'm Ana Messer," the woman said. "I don't think I introduced myself yesterday."

"Brandy Charles," she returned, shaking the offered hand.

"Oh, I know. I've been wanting to meet you, this mysterious woman who is the last thing that Devon remembers."

"Ana," Devon practically growled. Brandy refused to look at him. She was probably already blushing and looking at him would just make it worse.

"Sorry, sorry," Ana said, not looking all that apologetic. "I promised him I would behave," Ana told Brandy, "but I'm not in the best of moods, so I'm amusing myself by bugging my baby brother." The man to Ana's right put his arm around her shoulders.

"Don't mind her, she'll be fine as soon as she gets her second margarita," the man said. "I'm Jack Dent, by the way, Ana's fiancé. FYI, we're both in the ATF." The introductions continued around the table. Pretty quickly Brandy knew she wasn't going to remember half of them. She could obviously remember Devon Messer and Agent Ell Messer and their famous baseball playing brother Dominic, but that was about it. She knew two of them were ATF, two were NYPD and the pretty African American girl on her left wasn't in law enforcement at all, but she was going to have to try and act like she remembered all of their names. At least the relationships were fairly clear. The NYPD guy had his arm on the booth behind Ell Messer and the NYPD woman was sitting close enough to Dominic Messer to suggest a romantic relationship between the two. Brandy seemed to be sitting between the only two at the table that didn't have a significant other with them.

Though at the moment all of that didn't seem to matter. She had missed something that had been said that had triggered a full on discussion/argument between most members of the group and Brandy suddenly felt like she was in high school again. She hadn't been a social outcast, but she wasn't a social butterfly either and so in groups like this she had often been the quiet one, completely left out of the conversation. Well, at least when Elise didn't force her to participate.

She was feeling out of her element and just wanted to take a moment to breathe, so she quietly excused herself for a trip to the ladies' room. She didn't think that anyone would notice, but when she stood Devon Messer reached over and lightly gripped her wrist.

"You okay?" he asked, slight concern evident in his eyes. She hated that she had acted like such a wimp and brought that concern out and yet…and yet is was nice to have someone here in New York that was concerned about her.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied, giving the best smile that she could muster. "I just need to go to the bathroom for a minute."

"I'll go with you," came a voice from behind Brandy and she turned to find the African American woman scooting out of the booth.

"What is it with women always having to go to the bathroom together?" Brandy heard Dominic Messer ask as she walked to the ladies' room with the other woman.

As they approached the restroom, two women came out laughing about something. Inside the place was empty and Brandy headed for a stall, hoping to avoid conversation. She was going to present the information she had brought and then hightail it out of the place and avoid having any more conversation with the man whose touch she could still feel on her wrist.

But that was not to be. The young woman who had followed her into the bathroom was waiting for her as soon as she came out of the stall. "So, how crazy are my cousins do you think?"

Brandy smiled as she washed her hands. "I don't think they're crazy. Just a little more…boisterous than I'm used to I guess."

The woman laughed. "They are that." She stuck out her hand when Brandy finished drying her hands. "I'm Shayna Hawkes by the way. I know we threw a ton of names at you out there, so I thought I would reintroduce myself."

"Brandy Charles," she replied, shaking the offered hand before turning back to the mirror as she pulled out her combination lip gloss/chapstick. "I would be lost without this stuff," she confessed. "I had never had chapped lips before I moved here and I'm not exactly enjoying the experience."

Shayna laughed. "That is one of the joys of New York weather, yes. I imagine you don't have as much use for the chapstick out in southern California."

"No, not really. We're more about sun tan lotion," she joked.

"And the Padres. Devon mentioned that was where you met."

Brandy struggled not to blush at the suddent shift in topics. "Uh, yeah. He was there to watch Dominic and happened to be sitting near where I was." She looked over at the woman that she guessed to be around her own age, maybe slightly younger. "Why, what has he said about our meeting?"

"Since he woke up from his coma? Not much and his unwillingness to talk has been baffling the rest of the family. Dominic can only barely remember Devon introducing him to you and your friend, so the family is curious about the rest of the story. And when they get curious, they usually find a way to get answers."

Brandy had often played the fool, but this time she managed to catch the nuance in the other woman's words, how she had said "since he woke up" and "the rest of the family." "But he told you, didn't he?"

Shayna smiled as she leaned a hip against the counter. "Months ago, not long after it happened. Devon and I have been best friends since we were kids, a united front against the older kids in the family." She crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly. "I disliked you without ever having met you because you insulted him. Didn't matter that Devon had been honest and admitted that your friend was mostly at fault, but I didn't think you were all that better if you would be friends with someone like that. But I've had to change my estimation of you since Devon woke up. I've heard about your professional abilities from Ella, but I've been more impressed by what Devon has said, or rather what he hasn't said."

Brandy was lost. "What he hasn't said?"

"He's refused to tell anyone the full story about the day you met. Our family is fiercely protective of one another and Devon must feel the need to protect your reputation from their opinion. He even asked me to keep quiet about it. Of course he couldn't actually remember telling me about it, but he figured that he must have told me. We tell each other most things."

Brandy didn't know what to say to all of that. Hoping her voice didn't betray the emotions she was feeling in that moment, she just blurted something out. "You guys seem like a really close family."

"Yeah, we are," Shayna agreed. "Though you haven't seen close until you meet our parents."

"I've met one uncle," Brandy said. "In fact he came into the office today and I still can't remember his name even though that was like the third or fourth time I've met him. I think his name is John? Or Tom? Something like that?"

"Don. He's Kaile's dad. She's the dark haired woman out at the table that Dominic was cozied up to." Shayna tilted her head again. "What was Uncle Don doing at the FBI office? Ella mentioned earlier that she spent the whole day chasing leads around the city so he couldn't have been there to see her."

"Well, he was in a way, but he said he would fill her in later. He came with a woman from the DEA to bring me some guns to process from their big bust yesterday. Does your uncle have something against Darron Rhys, the Special Agent in Charge of our office?"

Brandy should have probably segued better, but Shayna took the question in stride. "Not that I'm aware of, though maybe one of my cousins knows something I don't. Why?"

"Just an impression I got," Brandy shrugged, running a hand through her hair. "Agent Rhys brought them to my lab this morning. Rhys hasn't spoken to me since the day that I started the job, but he brought your uncle and this woman from the DEA to me and I just got the feeling that your uncle couldn't wait for him to leave."

"Wait a second, back up. Why were they bringing you guns in the first place? Doesn't the DEA have their own people for that kind of stuff?"

"Ah, well, your uncle thought the weapons might be related to a case I've been working with Agent Messer." She couldn't say more than that. She had probably already said too much.

"But how would Uncle Don have gotten involved with the DEA?" Her eyes widened and it was like a light bulb went off over her head. "Oh my gosh, you mentioned a big bust from yesterday. This woman's name wouldn't happen to be Deborah Dent would it?"

"I think that might be it, though as you can already tell I'm really bad with names." Brandy was bewildered as the other woman smiled hugely, grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the bathroom.

"Oh, this is great. I never have news like this to tell first. I'm usually the last to know anything in our family. No, I take that back," she said as they weaved their way back to their table. "My sister is the last to know, but she's the baby, she _should_ be the last to know." They reached the table and everyone stopped talking and turned to them.

"What took so long, Shay? We were about to send a search party in after you guys," Dominic joked.

"I was just getting the scoop on you guys," Shayna smirked as she slid back into her seat and Brandy followed suit.

They had everyone's full attention now. "What scoop?" Ana demanded. "Is it good? Because I need something good right now."

"I think it's good," Shayna replied. "Brandy has news for Ella on a case they're working on."

Ell rolled her eyes. "Of course she does. That's why she called me. What's so special about that?"

"What's so special is who brought her the new evidence for her to process. Tell them," she urged Brandy.

"Uh, Chief Flack brought me some weapons to process this morning. I've been working on them all day and I'm actually not done yet, but I wanted to let you know about what I've found so far."

Ell looked confused. "Uncle Don brought in new evidence? Why didn't he call me?"

"He said he couldn't reach you, though I got the impression that he hadn't tried very hard." Why had she said that? It wasn't her place to get in the middle of a family situation.

"That's probably because of who he brought the evidence in with," Shayna said. She was practically bursting with excitement over the knowledge she had that her cousins didn't.

"Spit it out, Shay," Devon said. "Who was Uncle Don with at the FBI office?"

Shayna paused for dramatic effect before letting everyone in on the news. "Jack's mom."

The table was silent for several moments. The first to move was Ana when she reached for her new, nearly full margarita and gulped half of it down. "I thought you said this was going to be good, Shayna. Hearing about my uncle and my future mother-in-law going at it again doesn't really fit my idea of 'good.'"

"But they didn't argue again. At least I don't think they did. Brandy?" she asked, turning to her right.

Brandy swallowed. "Uh, no, I don't think so. They weren't in my lab very long. Agent Rhys brought them in and they dropped off the guns and left. They said they were going to come back later for the evidence, but I never heard back from them, so I logged the guns into our evidence locker before coming here."

"Rhys?" That came from the man next to Ana that Brandy suddenly realized had introduced himself with the same last name as the DEA agent she had met earlier that day. "Darron Rhys?"

"You know him?" Ell asked, leaning around the guy on her left that Brandy figured was her boyfriend to talk directly to Jack.

"Yeah, my mom dated him a long time ago. I think they still go out to dinner sometimes whenever he's in D.C."

Shayna seemed to think that was big news. "Oh my gosh, that totally explains Brandy's other news! She got the impression that Uncle Don didn't like this Rhys guy and I had no idea why, but if Jack's mom has a history with him, maybe that's why Uncle Don reacted that way."

"What, you think he's jealous?" Dominic asked incredulously. "Did you hear us earlier, Shay? We told you how Don and Jack's mom had been at each other's throats yesterday, so why would he suddenly be jealous of a guy that she's dated?"

"Makes sense to me," Kaile interjected. "Now that I think about it, Deborah Dent is my dad's type. And think about us, Dom. Arguing can just be a manifestation of chemistry between two people sometimes."

Ana moaned as she put her head down on the table. "As if my life wasn't complicated enough, now my uncle has the hots for my future mother-in-law? Great!" She turned her head to look at her fiancé. "We are so eloping, like, tomorrow."

Jack just smiled. "I've been trying to get you to do that for months, so don't tempt me or I will have you on a plane to Vegas tomorrow."

"And suffer the wrath of our aunt and uncles, not to mention our parents," Ell interjected. "Anyway, as interesting as that all is, let's table the family discussion for the time being. I'm guessing Brandy didn't come down here to impart the news of our uncle's newest crush."

"Uh, no," Brandy said, pulling a couple of folded sheets out of her purse. "I didn't think I should bring the evidence here, so I printed out a few photos." She handed them over to Ell and then hesitated, glancing around the table at the non-law enforcement people there.

"These came from the DEA bust yesterday?" Ell asked. Brandy nodded. "Then you might as well tell everyone here what you know. I'm starting to get the feeling that this case might become a family affair, especially if the tips aren't just coming to me anymore. Everybody here is already aware of the basics because of the connection you just found yesterday to Jack's dad."

Brandy looked at the man who had been genial throughout the evening thus far but who had suddenly gone grim. He obviously didn't like where the conversation was going and Brandy couldn't blame him. It had to be hard to have his father's death dredged up all these years later.

"Um, okay. Well, do you notice anything about the weapons that I gave you pictures of?"

The pages were passed around the table and no one was noticing anything. Brandy was about to tell them when Devon finally got one of the pictures and spoke up. "That's not the weapon's original slide mechanism."

Brandy grinned. Now that she was in her element and discussing her work she could actually summon the nerve to look at him and talk to him. "Exactly." She turned back to Ell Messer since technically she was who Brandy worked with. "Both of these weapons have new parts. It's really, really well done and I almost didn't catch it."

"I still don't know how you caught it," Ana admitted, taking back the picture from Devon to scrutinize again. "And I'm also not sure why this is significant."

"I think I know," Ell said, looking at Brandy. "But I bet Charles here has a theory and I want to hear that first."

CSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINY

Devon watched as the ballistics tech blushed yet again. It was amazing how she went from confident to embarrassed in no time flat. Not that he had any room to talk. He was still trying to get over the jolt he had felt when she smiled at him.

"Well," she began. "I told you yesterday about how we've been getting all of these guns in relatively pristine condition. They've all been routinely cleaned and cared for, etc. The only blemishes are likely from the original owners, the ones who perpetrated the law enforcement shootings that these guns were responsible for. And so my thought is that some of the guns were damaged before this guy managed to acquire them and he didn't like that. He had to have them in good condition, possibly because he just had to shoot them himself, and so he saved what he could and replaced what he couldn't."

Devon was impressed. Brandy Charles was obviously not just a good ballistics tech, she knew how to put the evidence in context and come up with probable theories for it. And from the looks on the faces of the others at the table, they all agreed with his estimate of the woman. That realization probably shouldn't have made him as proud as it did.

"I think you're right," Ell told the blonde haired woman. "I'm getting the sense that this guy gets off on firing the weapons, probably imagining the shooting that each particular gun was involved in." That set off a discussion around the table, everyone tossing out their ideas. Devon just sat and watched since this wasn't his area of expertise, not that that was keeping his older brother from giving his opinion. He noticed Brandy opening her mouth a couple times, but she never spoke up. He figured she had something else to say, but his clueless relatives weren't paying attention to her anymore. So, he decided to give her some help.

"Ow!" Ana exclaimed, glaring at Devon as she rubbed her leg where he had kicked it under the table. "What the hell was that for?"

"For ignoring our guest," Devon said in Spanish. He didn't want Brandy to be embarrassed about him rebuking his family, so he spoke in a language he hoped she didn't speak. Ana had worked out of a field office in New Mexico for awhile and so she was the only other family member that knew Spanish. He couldn't use Italian since he knew Brandy would understand that. "I think she has something else to tell you guys, but you're too busy being loud to pay any attention."

"No fair," Dominic declared. "No talking in languages we can't understand you two, or I'll just start signing with Kaile and you won't know what we're saying." Devon did a little signing of his own, giving his older brother the one finger that could say so much, as several other family members gave Dom various comments along the lines of, "And we would care about that why?" Dominic huffed and was obviously disgruntled. Devon just smirked. His brother needed to be knocked down a peg or two by the family sometimes. Most of the time he heard nothing but praise and adulation from fans and the like, so his family had to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground.

During all of that, Devon almost missed the look that his sisters shared. Those two seemed to have a telepathic link at times, and they were using it now because somehow Ana conveyed what Devon had said by just her eyes. At least it seemed that way because now Ella turned to Brandy and asked, "Was this all you had for us, or is there something else you wanted to tell me?"

"Actually, there is," Brandy admitted. "Turns out the guy finally made a mistake. At least I'm hoping he did."

She had the full attention of the group again. "Go on," Ella urged.

"When I realized that the guy was remaking these weapons with new pieces, I decided to take them completely apart which is why I'm not done yet. I'm talking back down to the bits and pieces that haven't been separated since they were put together at the factory."

"And you found something?" Ella asked.

"Yeah. I hope it proves to be useful, because it could end up being some random factory worker or something innocuous like that, but my gut is telling me it's not, I really think-"

"Charles!" Ella said a little strongly, trying to get the rambling woman back on point. "What did you find?"

"A partial fingerprint." She sighed as she saw all of their hopeful faces. "But it's a very small one, only a few reference points, and I don't know if it will even be able to lead us anywhere. Fortunately it does have this one rather unique characteristic that allowed the computer to narrow the field somewhat, but it still spit out hundreds of names. It will take forever to go through them and it still may lead nowhere."

"But it also could be the lead that we needed. Good job, Brandy," Ella praised. The others joined in. Devon knew that Brandy likely didn't fully realize what high praise she was actually getting. Their family more than most appreciated the skill involved in getting this kind of evidence. When Ana started getting a little too effusive in her praise, Ella pointed a finger and told her to back off, that Brandy worked for the FBI and that was where she was going to say.

Devon just grinned. He was very much enjoying how well Brandy was fitting in with his family. He shifted slightly in the chair that the manager had provided for him and refused to contemplate too much why he was so happy about Brandy getting along with his family. Damn, but for probably the first time in his life he actually had a thought about not going back to the Navy and instead staying here in New York and asking out a pretty blond ballistics tech. But that scary realization would have to wait for another time as he was drawn back into the discussion around the table.


	8. Chapter 7

**AN:** Another day, another chapter. I especially wanted to post today and give people something to actually enjoy on Tax Day. ;)

Thanks to everyone for reviewing, reading, etc., it really means a lot. Thanks as always to my good friend **Kerry Blue**. Disclaimers are in the first chapter for anyone who needs them.

* * *

Don had known he was going to have to have this conversation eventually, but he had been hoping he could put if off awhile longer. At least it was his daughter and not Danny. He didn't think he could handle Messer's smirk today.

When Kaile had called to ask if he was free for lunch, Don begged off citing a need to tackle the paperwork backed up on his desk due to his absence from the office most of the last two days. Thirty minutes later she showed up with carryout from his favorite Irish restaurant. Even if she hadn't brought food he wouldn't have been able to turn her away. He had been wrapped around her little finger since the first time he held her in his arms all those years ago.

But two could play that game because he knew his daughter as well as she knew him. He was sure she wouldn't take long to get to the point of her visit, so he decided to cut her off at the pass. They sat down around his coffee table, he in a chair and she on the small loveseat, and after asking about how her arm was doing and getting the "It's fine" he had expected, he brought up the subject of his interaction with the DEA, albeit in a tangential way. "Ella called just a few minutes ago to say that Brandy Charles has been getting some interesting information off of those weapons I brought her yesterday from the DEA bust. Ella is calling everyone in the family to set up a meeting at your Aunt Lindsay's office later today to talk about all of it and hopefully figure out what's going on and who has it out for our family."

"Yeah, I know. I was out with Ella and the others last night when it was suggested that we should have a full family meeting about this," Kaile said. She took a sip of her drink. "We were actually all very interested in how you got the DEA to agree to hand over evidence to the FBI."

Don shrugged. "When I explained the full situation and the danger both of our families could be in, Agent Dent was very agreeable and even ended up being willing to leave the guns at the FBI for the time being."

"Ah, so it _was_ Agent Dent that you brought the guns over to the FBI with," Kaile said, smiling at her father.

"I have a feeling you already knew that." Don decided it was best to just rip the band-aid off. "Go ahead and ask me what you came here to ask, Kaile. You've never been good at subterfuge with me. Like when you were seven and thought you could trick me into letting you eat ice cream for dinner because you contended that it was a dairy product and an important part of the food pyramid."

Kaile rolled her eyes. "Nice try with the attempt at distracting me with tales about when I was a kid, Dad." She moved to the corner of the small couch and put one leg up under her. "Fine, you want it blunt, here it is: do you have the hots for Jack's mom?"

Don about choked on his drink. He had expected bluntness, but he hadn't expected that exact wording per se. His daughter was obviously enjoying his discomfort though. "Damn, Kaile, are you trying to kill your old man here?"

"Answer the question, Dad," she returned, obviously not willing to let him stall her on this.

He sighed and half-shrugged. "I don't know, it's possible. But it's not like it matters, she'll be heading back to Washington soon enough. So don't worry, I won't be going over to the dark side and asking out a Fed," he tried to joke. Kaile didn't seem to think it was all that funny.

"I'm not asking if you want to marry and settle down with her, Dad." She put her food down on the table and then leaned back into the couch and crossed her arms. "Look, sure, I did come here to tease you a little, but in all seriousness, you really need to loosen up and date a little more. I know I'm not the poster child for that myself, but I finally managed to loosen up a bit with Dominic. And I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not going to freak out on you and think that you're trying to replace my mother or something."

Don put down his own food, suddenly not all that hungry anymore. "You think I don't date because I'm worried you'll freak out?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But I do think you're afraid of any kind of serious romantic relationship for some reason. I can count on one hand the number of relationships you've had that have lasted more than a couple of weeks, and there haven't been that many more that have lasted less. So if it's not me that's holding you back, what is?"

Don got up and walked over to the window to look out at the city skyline. This wasn't something he had ever really expected to get all that deep into with his daughter. Hell, he had thought she wouldn't mind if he stayed single forever. "Maybe I've just never found anyone that could measure up to your mother, have you ever thought of that?"

Kaile snorted. "I know for a fact that that isn't true. If not for being worried how I would take it, you would have gotten together with Aunt Stella way back when I was a kid, and if you guys had gotten the chance I bet that could have become really serious."

He turned in shock to his daughter. "How did you…I mean…hell, I didn't think you knew about that."

His daughter gave him a sympathetic look. "The whole family knew, Dad. I had figured out that you guys had something going on all by myself, but then there was the time that Dominic and I eavesdropped on his parents and Uncle Sheldon and Aunt Tessa talking about it, speculating about when you guys would admit to the world that you were a couple. Uncle Danny thought you had reservations about how Uncle Mac would take a relationship between you two, but the rest of them thought it was me inadvertently holding you back." She smiled wistfully. "Dom thought it would be weird to have you two together, but I bet him that I could have you two married or at least engaged by the time we were out of high school. We were in seventh grade at the time and I thought more than five years was plenty of time to make it happen. Turns out we had little over a year before Aunt Stella was gone."

Don's heart broke, both for his daughter and for his own pain at remembering the past. He didn't think about Stella much in the daylight hours because it hurt too much, but he would talk it out if that's what his daughter needed. He walked over to the couch and Kaile shifted so he could sit down next to her. He pulled her up against his side, her head on his shoulder, and suddenly he felt like she was his little princess again, coming to him to fix her problems. He knew she didn't really need him like that anymore, but he appreciated still being close enough to his daughter that she could let down her tough exterior with him.

"Your aunts and uncles weren't completely correct in their assessment of the situation, as usual," he tried to joke, knowing that it fell flat. He sighed. "Your Aunt Stella and I had become…close, but we hadn't done anything to tell anyone about yet. We finally had one conversation about it, but we mutually decided to wait until you were a little bit older before we moved any further, not wanting to make your teenage years any harder by bringing that in to complicate life. Plus neither of us felt like we were in the right place yet to try anything more serious. I was still fairly new in my position here and Stella was contemplating moving up the ladder or leaving the lab and doing something else in the next few years. We were both making big decisions about the next phase of our life and we thought that getting together romantically would just complicate things unnecessarily." He didn't elaborate on what had necessitated that long talk between him and Stella. That was one memory that would stay his and his alone.

Kaile leaned forward to grab a tissue from the box on the coffee table before sitting back against the corner of the couch so that she could look at him. "And here I was thinking about how I could bring you two together. If only we had talked and figured things out, maybe it could have worked, and maybe…maybe Aunt Stella would have been living with us and she would still be alive."

Don shook his head. "Believe me, I've run every scenario possible through my head, but it's really unlikely that Stella would have moved in by then even if every obstacle had magically disappeared. And even if she had, there's nothing to say that the psycho that killed her wouldn't have still come after her, and instead of just Ella being witness to Stella's death it could have been me and you. Maybe I could have done something, but that guy shot Stella pretty fast, so he could have shot me too and then you would have been orphaned. No, as much as it pains me to admit it, and it took me a lot of years to acknowledge it, I don't think there is anything that any of us could have done to prevent what happened without knowing how psychotic that guy had become. I'm just glad his latest appeal was denied and that in a few months he should finally be put down like the dog that he is."

Kaile's eyes widened. "When did that happen? I haven't heard anything about it. I thought we were still waiting on the decision."

Don smiled, though it was a sad smile considering the topic. "This morning. I actually heard about it from Ella when she called earlier." She was always called first on that case whenever the current prosecutor handling it had any new information. It would likely be all over the news by the end of the day considering how much the press seemed to love covering their family, but the DA's office did their best to at least inform Ella before the news got out and she heard about it from the media. "I would have mentioned it earlier, but we got a little sidetracked discussing my lack of a love life I guess."

His daughter suddenly got a look in her eyes like she was figuring something out. "Yeah, and back to that, if you're no longer concerned about my reaction to anyone that you might date, why exactly haven't you managed to get serious with anyone in the last two decades?" Her eyes softened as she got it and he wanted to sigh. Why did his daughter have to be so smart? "Oh, Dad. Tell me you haven't held back because you think anyone you do get serious with might die?"

Don felt weary. This was definitely one of the most emotionally draining conversations he had ever had with his daughter. "No, I'm not afraid that I'm cursed or something." He paused to try and get his thoughts in order. "I'm just…tired of losing those I care about I guess, so I suppose I've maybe tried to limit myself to only caring about the family so that there was less of a chance that I would have to go through that again." He rubbed his eyes. "Both after your mom and Stella died, having to be there for you day after day was about the only thing that kept me going through the grief until I found my footing again. Now that you're an adult and can take care of yourself, I don't know if I could go through that again and come out on the other side of it." It was something he had never admitted to anyone. His friends had probably guessed it, but they had never outright asked him how he got through the pain. Of course, they had been dealing with their own pain too, especially in the case of Stella, and they never talked about it either. None of them were much for talking about those topics unless they were so drunk that they wouldn't remember the conversation in the morning anyway.

Kaile hugged him tight. "I still need you, Dad, don't think that I don't. I'd move back in with you if I thought you needed me to."

Don groaned good-naturedly, resorting to the sarcasm that had gotten him through the tough times in life. "Anything but that, please."

His daughter lightly smacked him on the shoulder as she sat up. "I was going to add that I wouldn't bug you about dating anymore and that I would stick up for you to the rest of the family, but you can forget about that now."

He grinned. They had returned to a lighter, less emotional place, and he was glad for it. "Okay, okay, you can move back in with me if you want to. I'll do anything to get you to help me keep your aunts, and more importantly your uncles, off my back. I was just thinking earlier that if your Uncle Danny smirked at me over this, I might just haul off and punch him."

Kaile laughed as she moved to dispose of some of the containers their food had been in and put the leftovers in a small fridge hidden by a bookshelf in a corner of his office. "If you do that, then the family will know for sure that you have the hots for Jack's mom." She picked up her suit jacket from where she had draped it over a chair and put it back on. "I still think you should ask her out, you know. You guys could have some fun while she's in town. As long as you don't split too badly and cause issues for Ana, anyway."

Don shook his head as he got up from the couch. "Which is a very good reason why anything between me and Deborah Dent is a very, very bad idea." He opened his arms and hugged his daughter. As she pulled back, he held her face in his hands. "You know I love you, right?" She nodded and he smiled, leaning forward to press a kiss to her forehead. He knew he didn't say that often enough to her. He supposed he was the typical guy, often thinking that showing his love was just as good as verbally expressing it. When Kaile had been little he had been better about it because he would respond in kind whenever she told him that she loved him, but they were both less verbal about it these days and he knew that was mostly his fault. She was her father's daughter after all. But one would think that someone like him, that had learned the lesson the hard way about telling those you cared about how you felt about them before it was too late, wouldn't forget so easily. Maybe he would work on that more. And maybe he would have some fun with Deb. God knew he could use some fun.


	9. Chapter 8

**AN:** It's been almost exactly five months since the last time I posted a chapter in this story and for that delay I sincerely apologize. Hopefully I can make up for that by letting everyone know that I waited to post anything more until I finished the story, so by my posting this chapter today you can be assured that the rest of the story is soon to follow. I should be posting a new chapter every day or every other day and should have it all up within a week or two.

Thanks as always to my friend and beta reader, **Kerry Blue**. She is always a tremendous help. I also want to thank those who reviewed or PMed in the last few months to let me know they were still interested in finding out how this story ended. I won't name names for fear of accidentally leaving someone out, but all the encouragement and interest was very much appreciated and was a part of my finally buckling down and writing the last few chapters of this story.

As part of that thanks to all of you who will read this story, I though of a kind of fan appreciation contest. When I started writing this story, I was of course influenced by the song that I chose for the title, _Everybody Plays the Fool_. However, there was another song that has influenced a few things here and there. It's still an oldie of course, and anyone who can figure out what that song is and who sang it will get to pick an oldie song for me to write a fic around. If it fits a chaptered story I have ideas for then I might use it for that, but I think it's more likely that I will write a oneshot for it and maybe even let the winner give me some ideas of what they would like to see. However, the only guarantee that I will make is that the winner gets to pick the title of my next fic in this series. All guesses must be given in a review only because 1) that restricts the amount of times people can guess to once a chapter and 2) because that allows the guesses to be public and transparent where everyone can see them and in the case of two or more people guessing the right song, everyone will be able to see for themselves who sent in the correct answer first. First correct answer, which means the full title and the correct artist, picks the title of my next fic in this series. At the end of each new chapter I post I will say whether the right answer has been given or, if there has been no correct answer, I will give some kind of hint about the song I'm thinking of. If no one gives the correct answer by the time I post the epilogue, I will tell everyone the answer and we will maybe try this again some other time. If anything about this confuses anyone, feel free to ask me in reviews or a PM. I hope this little contest I thought up will prove to be fun though and I look forward to possibly using someone else's idea for a title for my next fic. :)

Now that that is all out of the way, we can finally get on with the show. Disclaimers can be found in the first chapter if you need them, otherwise, continue on and hopefully you will enjoy the rest of my little story! :)

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Devon shifted slightly as he waited on the sidewalk outside his parents' house. He hoped she got here soon. He wanted to be well on his way before his mom called to check up on him. He had begged off from the family meeting by claiming fatigue and his parents hadn't questioned him. Devon felt a little guilty about playing on their worry over him, but it wasn't a complete lie. He _was_ tired, but he wouldn't let that stop him from helping the family and he couldn't do that from his mom's office where everyone else was gathering. He was going on a fact-finding mission and it was a little too…delicate for most of the members of his family. Which was why he had called Brandy Charles.

Just then an SUV pulled up and the woman in question waved him over. He got in and struggled with the seatbelt. She waited patiently and quietly until he finished for which he was grateful. He knew it didn't make him less of a man to ask for help, but it still grated. "Thanks for coming. I know you don't really have any reason to trust me."

She turned in her seat to face him more fully. "I would think it would be you who wouldn't trust me." She paused and bit her lower lip momentarily. "I haven't really had the chance to apologize about our first meeting-"

Devon held up a hand. "Really, it's not necessary." He smiled when she started to protest. "Even if it was, you came and picked me up without asking any questions. I think that makes us even."

She searched his eyes, considering his words. Finally she nodded and turned back towards the front. She put the car in drive but left her foot on the brake. "Okay then. Where to?"

"New Jersey."

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"New Jersey?" He had just finished thanking her for not questioning him, and here she was doing just that. And yet, she couldn't help herself. She hadn't known what to expect, but it certainly hadn't been interstate travel.

"Yeah. The information I think we can get is there." She raised an eyebrow but moved back out onto the street and headed towards New Jersey.

They were quiet for awhile, which didn't really bother Brandy. When she was excited about something she could ramble with the best of them, but she also liked to be quiet sometimes and didn't feel the need to fill silences with noise. She supposed that was a good trait to have since she often had to spend hours bent over a microscope or a weapon analyzing the evidence without anyone to talk to.

And being quiet gave her time to think, though right now she wasn't sure that was the best idea since her thoughts tended to revolve around the man sitting next to her. She felt this strong connection to him which was odd considering how little she really knew about him. She had met most of his family now, but she still didn't feel like she knew the man. Well, staying silent wasn't going to solve that problem and Brandy wasn't one to leave a mystery unanalyzed.

But where to start? "So," she began, going with the first thing that came to mind, "how is your rehab going?"

She glanced over in time to see him grimace as he flexed his left hand. "Pretty well. I hope to be out of this sling soon. The hip will take longer to heal."

"At least it was your left arm that was hurt." She blushed at the raised eyebrow that comment received. "I noticed that you were right-handed. Considering guns are my thing, I tend to notice whether people are right- or left-handed and things like that."

She could hear the smile in his voice when he spoke next. "I should be used to those kinds of observations. In addition to my sisters in law enforcement, both of my parents are lab techs like you and they tend to notice even the smallest of details. I almost never got away with anything I did when I was a kid because their eyes didn't miss anything."

Brandy sighed a little wistfully. "Must be nice." She lightly bit her tongue. Why had she said that? Around Devon Messer she was worse than usual with her habit of blurting things out that she didn't mean to say.

"You didn't have people watching out for you growing up?" he asked, slight concern evident in his voice. At least she hoped that it was concern and not pity.

"I didn't have a bad childhood or anything," she assured him. She didn't really want to say more, but she figured that if she wanted to learn more about him, then she was going to have to be willing to open up a little about herself. "I know my parents care about me, but they're both very busy career people, so they weren't generally around to notice whether I had done anything wrong. Even when they were around they were often too preoccupied to care too much. Not that they really had anything to worry about. I was a bit of a goody-two shoes."

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Devon didn't doubt that she had been, probably in an effort to please her parents enough to get a little attention from them. "My parents are busy with their careers too, but they've always done their best to be involved in my life. I can appreciate that now, but it could feel oppressive sometimes when I was a kid. When most of the adults in your family are involved in law enforcement, they are well-versed in the bad things that can happen in the world and can be overprotective at times." He decided to relieve a little of the tension in the car by telling one of the family's favorite stories about him. "That's why I once ran away from home."

Brandy glanced at him before turning back to the road. "I ran away once. But I couldn't get myself to cross the street without an adult, so I ended up circling the block a couple of times before giving up and coming home. I think I was six or seven."

"I was eleven going on thirty. My sisters had gone to college the previous fall and I was the only kid left at home. I didn't know it at the time, but my parents and uncles were working a hard case, and the stress and the people they were dealing with made them worry even more about us kids. We couldn't go anywhere or do much of anything and they wouldn't tell us why they had suddenly changed our routines."

He paused his story to give Brandy a few more directions on where they were going. Gazing out the window he continued the tale. "I thought I could deal with it until my sisters came home for the summer. They were usually good about hanging out with me when they could, despite the age difference. But then I was told that they had both decided to stay at school over the summer to keep the jobs they had found there and take a couple of summer courses. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper."

Brandy smiled. "Threw a temper tantrum, did you?

"No," he responded a little indignantly. "I don't throw tantrums. My family will attest to that. No, I plan my battles around any and all obstacles. Shayna was in on it and was going to come with me, but she chickened out at the last second. In the middle of the night, I snuck out of the house and made my way to the airport. A few hours later I was knocking on the door of my sister Ella's dorm room and needless to say, she was surprised to see me." It was amazing how those old memories could come back so easily with such clarity and yet he still couldn't recall the last six months.

"I'll bet. You managed to get on a plane by yourself? Where was your sister going to college at the time?"

"The University of Illinois." He grinned at Brandy's look. "Yeah, it was a bit of a trip. Like I said, it took some planning, including figuring out how to get money using one of my parents' credit cards, but I pulled it off."

"You must have scared them half to death," Brandy said, obviously a little incredulous at what he had pulled off.

"They didn't really have time to be scared. I showed up at Ella's before they had even figured out I was gone." He rubbed his bad shoulder with his right hand trying to ease a little of the ache he was feeling. "My Uncle Mac likes to say that's when he first knew I would go into a profession like the SEALs that would utilize my skills. But I'm glad the enemies can't learn detection skills from my parents. I think this is the first time I've been able to slip away from them without notice since that trip back when I was eleven."

"I wouldn't blame them." Her eyes widened as all of his words seemed to register. "Wait, your parents don't know what we're doing? How about your sister?"

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"Ella? No, she doesn't know either. You're the only one." He pointed ahead to where he wanted her to turn and she realized they were heading to the big convention center near where the New York Giants and Jets played. She had always thought it odd that New York teams would play in a different state, but that was neither here nor there. Right now she had to consider the pickle that Devon Messer had gotten her into.

She didn't regret helping him out, but she was dreading how Ell Messer was going to react to it. Brandy had a feeling that the agent wouldn't respond lightly to the situation. Navy SEAL or not, Devon was still the woman's baby brother. Maybe Brandy could defend herself somewhat if she at least knew why they were there. "What's going on at the convention center that you want to be there for?"

He was kept from responding as they pulled into the convention center's parking lot and were stopped by an attendant looking to collect the parking fee. As Brandy reached into her purse, a wallet landed in her lap. She looked up at Devon. "I can cover the parking fee."

"Show the man my ID," Devon advised her. "I have a feeling we'll get a discount."

She opened the wallet to see his military ID card showing rather than the customary driver's license. Doing as he asked, she brought down the driver's side window and showed the ID to the attendant.

The man looked at it, then glanced over at Devon, his eyes taking in the sling. "Navy SEAL? You squids are always getting hurt one way or another."

Brandy was shocked at the man's comments, but Devon just rolled his eyes. "Let me guess. Marine?"

The other man smiled. "Yeah." He quoted a price to Brandy that was half what the sign nearby said it should be. She pulled out the money needed and handed it to the man. He nodded off to his left towards the convention center. "You guys can park over in the handicapped area. I think there are still some spots left. Otherwise you'll have to park practically a mile away." By the look of the parking lot the attendant's assessment wasn't much of an exaggeration.

"We don't have a sticker or anything with us," Devon told the man, obviously bristling at being thought of as handicapped.

"I'll let the other attendants know that you're okay." He stuck a piece of paper on their dashboard so it would be visible through their windshield. "Take the space, kid. I can see you're favoring your hip a little and you really don't want to walk that far." The man walked away and Brandy brought the window back up while sending a questioning look in Devon's direction.

He sighed heavily. "Take the handicapped space. I suppose I should take advantage of this kind of thing while it lasts," he tried to joke.

She didn't comment and did as he said. They parked and headed into the convention center. Once inside, Brandy suddenly realized that Devon might have had another reason for calling her besides keeping the trip from the rest of his family. "You brought me to a gun show?"

He smirked as he scanned the huge space. "I thought you would be in heaven at one of these things. I'm betting you get all excited at the sight of so many weapons." He headed off to the right like he had spotted what he had been looking for and Brandy followed him.

"Maybe if I knew and trusted all of these people. But a lot of those who buy and/or sell guns at things like this are not the kind of people I'm comfortable with." It wasn't an unusual opinion in law enforcement. Many civilians thought that because cops and agents carried guns that they must really like them and appreciate the joy others got out of them. Some, like her friend Elise, would even think that law enforcement were a little _too_ into their guns. But Brandy knew that more law enforcement personnel than Elise would think didn't actually enjoy guns. They saw the weapons as a necessary part of their job and would become proficient with them where necessary, but they didn't relish the training or ever having to draw the weapon on the job and they certainly didn't go the range to shoot for fun. Brandy was somewhere in between that view and those who really did enjoy shooting guns. She appreciated, and yes, even sometimes enjoyed the feeling of a powerful weapon in her hands and what it felt like to shoot it. But she never shot one outside of the lab or the range and she wasn't comfortable with the idea of civilians having them. She didn't just analyze rifling characteristics, she was sometimes called on to analyze things like a bullet's trajectory, including when a bullet traveled through a human being, and how it would react. She knew all about the power of these weapons and the destruction they could cause, and so she didn't take something like gun shows lightly.

Devon glanced over at her. "I hear you. But I know someone here who might be able to get us some information on those guns you've been analyzing, and he wouldn't have been especially receptive to any of my family members asking the questions."

Her eyes widened. "Why? Does he have a reason to be wary of the government?"

"Yes, but not for the reasons you're obviously thinking of. He used to be in the Navy. That's where I met him. He was actually the guy who taught me a lot of what I know about weapons. But a few things he went through made him bitter about government control in general, the federal government in particular, so while he'll talk to me and help if he can, he wouldn't have said a word to my sisters. In fact, let's not mention where you work if we can help it."

Great, this was just great. What in the world had she let him drag her into?


	10. Chapter 9

**AN:** Thanks so much for all the welcome back messages, I really appreciate every one of them. I want to say a special thank you to those who leave anonymous reviews because I don't reply directly to them, but I appreciate them just the same. It's just a matter of being prudent about who I reveal my e-mail address to, which I don't have to worry about with non-anonymous reviews when I can directly reply using FF's system.

Thanks as always to my awesome beta, **Kerry Blue**, without whom this latest chapter could not have gotten up so quickly. Disclaimers, as always, can be found in the first chapter. Enjoy!

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What in the world was their family being dragged into? As Ella laid out all the information that they now had about the case, Don became more and more worried that they were all being drawn into yet another dangerous situation. It had been one thing when it was him and Mac and Danny and Lindsay and Stella and to a lesser degree Sheldon taking on these kinds of risks, but it was a whole other ballgame now that their kids were involved. And they had already taken a few hits this year with Ella and Kaile's serious injuries. Don was starting to wonder how much more their family could take.

He looked around Lindsay's office as the others discussed the case. With the growing size of their family they were really going to need to find a different place for these kinds of meetings, but for now they could still all fit into the space at least somewhat comfortably. In addition to all the family in the room, there was Jack and JD and Jack's mother. Shayna had even come which had surprised Flack a little. It was somewhat hard to accept that the babies of the family weren't really babies anymore. But beyond her age, Shayna had never really been interested in law enforcement in any way and didn't get involved in these types of family meetings. Don wondered if her sudden interest had anything to do with Devon and his thing for the FBI ballistics tech that had done so much for the case. Shayna may not have chosen law enforcement for a career, but she was just as protective as the rest of them when it came to the family, especially Devon. Those two had been nearly inseparable growing up.

Speaking of, where was Devon? Flack had shown up a little late, so he probably missed the explanation for his nephew's absence. Devon might not be law enforcement, but that hadn't stopped Dominic or Shayna from coming to the gathering, and besides, the meeting was mostly about trying to figure out who had a grudge against one or more members of the family and Devon could have ideas on that subject.

Something was giving Don an uneasy feeling. It started in his gut, right around the faded but still visible scar from his explosion experience all those decades ago. He knew it was likely just psychosomatic stuff, but rather than changes in weather causing an ache there, it was usually a bad feeling about something that was going on. He had felt the ache when he looked through the two-way mirror at the guy that would eventually murder Stella, had felt it again after Ella was shot this past summer and then when Kaile got tangled up in that serial murder case. It was a feeling he never ignored, but it rarely gave him clear direction on what was causing the alarms bells to go off in his subconscious.

Crossing his arms and leaning more fully against the wall, Don looked down at Shayna sitting on the couch next to him. She was going through a report which piqued his interest. "Whatcha got there, kid?" She didn't answer him, staring absently at the floor in front of her feet. Don lightly touched her shoulder. "Shayna."

She looked up, slightly startled. "Sorry, Uncle Don. I guess I zoned out there for a second."

"Care to tell me what's got you so distracted?"

"It's this list of people who have fingerprints that could fit the partial that Brandy found on one of the weapons," she said.

"Something catch your eye?" She might not be in law enforcement or trained as a forensic scientist, but Shayna was a smart woman and Don wouldn't put it past her to pick up on something that others had missed. She had good instincts and could have easily followed in her father's footsteps to the morgue or her aunts' and uncles' to the lab, but she had found her true love in treating animals and Flack couldn't begrudge her that.

"I think so, but I can't figure out what it is yet." She looked up at him, the frustration clear on her face. "You know that feeling when you just know you have the answer staring you in the face, but you can't grasp it?"

Don snorted. "Every day, kid." Detectives had to learn to live with that sensation early on in their careers or they would burn out from the seemingly endless frustration they encountered at times.

"So, anybody got anyone who could be this pissed off at them?" Don tuned back into the wider discussion going on in the room as Ella asked the question. He had to resist the urge to smirk. The better question for this group would be who _didn't_ have someone who could be this pissed off at them.

"I'm thinking this has to be contained to the older generation," Jack spoke up. Flack was happy the man fit so easily into even these kinds of family situations. He would make a good addition to their group. "This had to have taken years of planning and execution. None of the second generation of this family have been in law enforcement long enough to engender that kind of hate with someone who has had enough time to pull off this extensive of an operation."

It was a good point, but Don was ready to play devil's advocate. "Then why would the tips come in to Ella and Kaile? And why would one of the weapons lead back to your father's death?"

"Any number of reasons," Ana stated, subtly backing up her fiancé. Flack succeeded in containing his smile at her tone, but others in the family didn't fare as well and had to cover as best they could. "One, it could be that someone is ticked at one of you guys but decided to get at you with your kids. Two, it could just be that you don't fit what he needs. Uncle Sheldon has never been a street cop who would do busts and find guns like this, Mom and Dad and Uncle Mac haven't been on the street since the early part of their careers, and even you Uncle Don haven't been on the street in a long time. Sending them to you guys directly would have given you all too much to work with, so he hides them somewhere and then gives anonymous tips about other illegal actions going on in those locations so that we just stumble across the guns and can't trace how they got there."

"Okay, that all makes sense," Mac agreed. "So who have we ticked off that has the resources to accomplish something like this? It has to be someone we didn't manage to put away or who is out on parole because I don't think anyone could pull something off this well from behind bars."

"I don't know, Mac," Danny disagreed. "We've seen cons pull off some impressive stuff from inside. Remember that guy who got a girl to fake a crime similar to his so that he could claim that the real perp was still loose?"

Don snorted. "Yeah, and I remember a case where a guy was using his wife to run his drug operation while he was behind bars. It was hard to nail them for it, too, what with the whole spousal privilege issue."

"Can we stop the trip down memory lane and return to the case at hand?" Don raised an eyebrow at Ella's tone. He could guess what had her on edge and that kept him from commenting on her attitude. Her twin sister on the other hand had no problem calling her on it.

"Calm down, Ella. I know the Palmer thing has gotten you all agitated, but that doesn't mean you should take it out on-"

"Oh God, that's it!" Shayna suddenly stood from the couch, one piece of paper in her hands and the rest falling from her lap to the floor.

Sheldon looked questioningly at his oldest child. "What's 'it,' honey?"

Shayna walked around behind Lindsay's desk. "May I?" she asked Ella who had been standing behind the desk while giving her layout of the case.

"Have at it," Ella replied, stepping away as Shayna sat down in Lindsay's chair and began furiously typing away at the computer.

"I was staring at these printouts trying to figure out what was bothering me," Shayna started as she continued to type and manipulate the mouse, oblivious to the bemused/intrigued/worried looks she was receiving from everyone else in the room. "And everything you guys were saying was running through my head and suddenly it all just _clicked_," she said, simultaneously punching a button that brought up what she had on the computer onto the large screen Lindsay had near her desk.

Shayna had brought up a newspaper article. Don's stomach clenched as he read the headline and realized what the article was about. He glanced at the date. What did a twenty-year-old article about Stella's death have to do with what they were discussing?

Everyone else obviously had the same question running through their minds and Don saw more than one person stiffen and visibly withdraw from the pain that evoking these memories inevitably caused. Flack knew he must look much the same way and worked at not clenching his jaw tight enough to break his teeth.

"Look, it all fits," Shayna explained. "You all were figuring it had to be someone ticked off at the first generation of our family, but for some reason using the second generation to get back at you. But what if this psycho is ticked at _both_ generations?" She pointed at the screen. "Aunt Stella's death directly involved both generations. Stella was the one who arrested Maurice Palmer to begin with and Ella's testimony put him on death row."

"Whoa, hold on, Palmer? Like you just said, he's on death row, Shay. As much as I wouldn't put it past that scumbag, the restrictions are even tighter for death row inmates and I just don't see him being able to pull it off," Don protested. But his gut was telling him that his niece was on to something. He just really, really didn't want her to be right because that would mean bringing up all kinds of horrible memories for all of them.

"I don't know how much Palmer is involved or if he's even involved at all, but it does ultimately go back to him. Think about it, the guns are significant because they are all weapons that were used to kill cops or agents but weren't found after the crime was committed. Aunt Stella was a cop killed with a gun that was never recovered." Shayna slapped the paper she still had onto a digital reader and put the image up on the screen alongside the newspaper article. "But this was what did it." She highlighted a name and brought it forward, one Carter Milton. "His name on that report of fingerprint matches was pinging something in my head and then when Ana mentioned Palmer it all came together. Over the years I've read many accounts of the events around Aunt Stella's death so that I could understand what happened without having to ask you guys to relive it."

Don winced. They probably should have all talked about things more with the kids, but emotional availability wasn't exactly the strong suit of any of them. Sheldon and Tessa were probably the best at it, but their kids had been so young when Stella died, Carla not even born yet, that it was likely something they didn't want to burden them with since they didn't actually remember it. Flack could totally buy that Shayna would do some of her own digging and wondered if Devon had done much the same or if he had pulled details from his parents.

He was brought back to the present as Shayna continued. "I was rereading some of them not that long ago and for some reason the name stuck in my head." This time she highlighted a portion of the newspaper article and brought that forward and there it was in black and white. _Carter Milton._ In a flash Don was thrust back into his memories, the face of an angry kid staring at him from across the courtroom. Normally he might have had sympathy for the family of a criminal if they had been innocent bystanders, but Flack had been too consumed by his grief over Stella's death to feel much of anything else. He had endured questions later from unscrupulous reporters wondering how Don felt about being part of putting a boy's father on death row, and it had been all that he could do to keep from yelling at them that maybe they should ask if that piece of shit felt anything about killing not only a good cop, but someone who a lot of people loved as a family member and as a friend. The last thing Flack remembered hearing about the kid was that he had moved away with his mother some time ago. She had already been divorced from Palmer, hence the son's different last name, and Don seemed to recall that she had actually been a witness for the prosecution in Stella's case.

You could have cut the tension in Lindsay's office with a knife, though it may have needed to be a heavy-duty steak knife to make it through the pain that was building. No one had even questioned Shayna's conclusions. What were the odds that it would just be coincidence that the fingerprint of the son of the man that killed Stella would show up on a gun that was used to kill a cop and then dropped in their family's lap?

The silence was finally broken by a ringing phone. Ella reached down and flipped it open, her face a stone mask. Don didn't envy whoever was on the other end of that phone. Out of all them, Ella had to be taking this the hardest considering she actually lived through the shooting firsthand. He wouldn't doubt she could still hear the shots that had killed Stella.

"Messer." She listened, her face darkening even more which Don wouldn't have thought possible. "Put him on the phone." A moment passed before Ella spoke again. "Don't 'hey' me. I'm putting you on speaker so you can explain your stupidity to the entire family." She brought the phone away from her ear and pressed a button. "Go ahead, Devon, explain to everyone where you are."

"New Jersey." Flack thought he might have needed to clean out his ears. Did Devon really say he was in _New Jersey_?

Evidently he had because Danny was all over his youngest son. "What the hell are you doing in New Jersey?"

"Following a lead. Look, I had Brandy call because I think I found something that could be useful and I thought Ella should know sooner rather than later. Can we save the lectures for another time?"

"No, we can't, because you haven't been here and you've missed some pretty important developments," Ella bit out. "This case has just blown up in our faces and it is most assuredly not the time for you to be out on your own with just a lab tech when you can barely walk!" Her voice rose as she talked, the end of her rant ending in a shout. When Devon didn't respond she spoke again in only a slightly lower tone of voice. "Devon, did you hear me?"

"Yeah, I heard you. Look, I gotta go, sis." Don was incredulous. He had to go? What the hell? "Tell Aunt Claire I'll see her soon. Love ya, bye." He hung up and there was a stunned silence in the room for about two whole seconds before everyone started bolting for the door and the elevator beyond.

JD was obviously bewildered, but he followed Ella without comment. Deborah Dent wasn't as willing to go quietly. "Okay, what the hell did I miss?" she asked as she and Don squeezed onto the elevator with everyone else and the doors started to close.

"Claire was Mac's wife a lifetime ago. She died September 11, 2001. Something happened and Devon was telling us that he was in danger and that he thinks he could be meeting Mac's wife in the afterlife soon." Don looked around at the grim faces of his family that confirmed they had all reached the same conclusion. Lindsay was on her phone to have someone trace where Devon had been calling from while Mac called for transportation and backup. Flack just tried to breathe through the pain in his chest. He hated being right, he knew the ache under his scar had meant something. Damnit, how much was their family expected to go through?

* * *

P.S. No one tried to guess the secret song after the last chapter, so I'll give a hint now. The song felt perfect to me as an influence partly because of the fact that Devon is a sailor. :) (See the author's note in the previous chapter if you have no clue what I'm talking about.)


	11. Chapter 10

**AN:** Thanks as always to **Kerry Blue** and all you readers out there. Just want to make a small note that there is the occasional swear word in this story. I don't think there are any in this chapter, but I forgot to mention it before the last chapter which does have one. That, along with some of the darker content, is why this story has the rating it has! Also, sorry if this chapter is a little short. Happens sometimes, but I hope you like it anyway.

* * *

Devon breathed through the pain and tried to lock it away to be dealt with later. It was what he had done in the past on SEAL missions, but it was difficult to manage in this instance. Partly because he had never been this injured while on a mission before, and partly because he was also dealing with his anger at himself and his guilt over getting Brandy into the situation with him.

He had been so preoccupied with the phone call to his family that he hadn't paid enough attention to his surroundings and it had cost them. One of the goons that Devon had originally mentally catalogued as just another gun show enthusiast had had a gun at Brandy's back where it couldn't be seen before Devon was even aware of the danger. As much as Devon had wanted to lunge at the goon and take him out before he could blink, even if Devon had been at full strength he wouldn't have wanted to engage the armed thugs in a crowded public space. So, he had decided to momentarily cooperate and they had been hustled out of the nearest exit and shoved into a waiting van that took off as soon as everyone was inside. While one guy held a gun to Brandy's head, another had duct taped Devon's ankles together and then his hands, taking obvious pleasure at the winces Devon couldn't hold back when his bad shoulder was wrenched too much.

Devon had been trained for things like this, but Brandy had not and it was showing. He didn't dare say anything for fear of antagonizing the goons, even as one's hands lingered too long on her arms as he pulled them together to tape her hands up, but he tried to reassure her with his gaze. He would get her out of this if it killed him. He owed her that much since he had been the one to get her into the mess in the first place.

CSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINY

Flack was way beyond too old for this. The bulletproof vest someone had given him to wear felt a lot heavier than he remembered, but otherwise it was a familiar burden that still felt right after all these years. They had made it to the convention center in good time and the New Jersey cops had sealed the place even before the family got there as soon as it had been established that that was where Devon had been calling from, but it had been too little, too late. There were still a few nooks and crannies in the large building yet to be searched, but Don knew that his nephew and the ballistics tech were gone.

They had one witness who remembered seeing a guy in a sling and a woman getting into a van with some other guys, but the woman hadn't really retained many details that would help with the search. While most of the family focused on trying to organize a search anyway or interviewed other potential witnesses, Don was with Deborah Dent looking at a list of the vendors at the show trying to figure out who Devon might have come to see. Problem was, they weren't even sure he had come to see a seller, he could have just set up a meeting with someone else here under the cover of the show, but it was a place to start.

"Sir." Don looked up to find a New Jersey state cop standing with a man in khakis, camouflage shirt and a military style buzz cut. "This guy says he has information that could help."

"Sure, thanks." The cop walked off and Flack folded his arms as he returned the steady gaze of the man considering him. "You have something for me?" In a different situation he might have been more conciliatory, but that was a little too much to ask of him considering the current state of things.

"Yeah. Look, if it was anyone other than Messer I wouldn't get involved, but I owe the kid. I was the one he came to see."

Don's eyes narrowed. "Do you have any idea who took him?"

"Not exactly, but I think I know why they risked taking him in such a public place. Devon asked me if there had been any rumors about someone looking to buy weapons used in cop killings and/or parts used to restore those weapons. I had heard vague whispers in passing from people who knew other people. The best I had was third-hand information, but no specifics because I make it a point not to get involved with scum like that." The man rubbed the top of head. "I told Devon and the girl with him to walk around the show while I put out a couple of feelers. I'm thinking word got back to someone who didn't appreciate Devon asking questions and they decided to eliminate the immediate threat."

Having his suspicions confirmed didn't help the ache in Don's gut. "You're going to have to tell us who you talked to so we can trace that path and figure out who ordered the kidnapping." Flack was pretty sure they knew the person ultimately responsible for everything that was happening, but they still needed to follow the evidence. He felt the anger rising when he saw the man's hesitation, but Deb spoke up before Don could release any of it.

"Look, you don't have to worry about any friends getting in trouble as long as they weren't directly involved. We're just interested in finding our people. I give you my word on that as someone high enough in federal law enforcement to keep that promise." The man still seemed reluctant, but he relented and gave them a couple of names before backing away and saying that was all he could do to help.

Don didn't even have time to make a sarcastic comment to the man's back because his nieces were rushing over to him. While he only had on a flak vest and carried just his department issued sidearm, the kids were all fully decked out in tactical gear they had gotten from somewhere and it was a bit disconcerting to see. He knew Kaile was likely similarly attired by now and didn't relish seeing her ready to head into a potentially deadly situation. "What's up you two?"

"We have an idea of where Devon and Brandy could have been taken," Ella told him. "One of Mom's people just called her after they did some digging into Milton's life. We already have people with a warrant at his place in Manhattan so we know he's not there, but his stepfather left him some property further south in Jersey and he has a boat that is docked on Staten Island. Either way the van probably took them south on 95 for awhile, we just don't know for how long. We've got people heading in both directions and we're about to head south in the general direction of both locations until we hear whether either one pans out. We're turning over the rest of things here to the locals."

"Sounds like a plan." He turned to Deborah Dent. "You want to stay here and help supervise or come with us for the ride?"

"I would hate to miss the fun. Besides, if you have to act outside of your jurisdiction, it might help to have a higher level fed like myself around to smooth ruffled feathers." The look in her eyes made it clear that those weren't the only reasons she wanted to tag along. She now knew one of the guns in the case was connected to the death of her husband, so she had a vested interest as well.

Don snorted as they all turned and headed for the doors leading outside to the waiting vehicles. "Something tells me you ruffle more feathers than you smooth, Agent Dent."

The woman smirked, her expression lightening just a tad as Don had intended. "You haven't known me long enough. I can be diplomatic when I choose to be."

Flack just smiled. He didn't have much room to judge. He used to be more diplomatic in his younger days. He supposed getting the promotion to Deputy Chief had alleviated much of his need for those skills since he had moved past much of the brass he had felt the need to be on good terms with before. Don wasn't quite as cranky as Mac could get, especially when dealing with department politics, but he knew he had likely picked up some of that from his friend over time. Being fairly close to retirement had removed another reason for him to keep his diplomacy skills sharpened. Speaking of retirement, running once again into some crazy and extremely dangerous situation made the thought of not being an active member of the NYPD anymore not as scary and insane as it had seemed years ago.

Don quickly lost any light-heartedness they had momentarily achieved. They all piled into the nearest vehicle which turned out to have Jack Dent in the driver's seat. They pulled away from the convention center along with several other SUVs that contained the rest of the family. Don hoped they could find Devon before it was too late. He also hoped for several reasons that Charles came out of this okay. Mostly just because she was a good person and an innocent bystander to this whole mess, but partly because Don didn't want his nephew to have to go through the guilt and pain he would inevitably feel if Charles was hurt or worse because she took him to the gun show.

As stupid as their little trip to New Jersey had been, Devon had just been trying to help and Don couldn't fault him for that. But it opened Devon up to feeling like anything that would happen now was his fault and he wouldn't have the excuse that people had always given Ella, that she had only been a child and couldn't do anything to save her aunt. Even that logic hadn't been enough to keep Ella from feeling the guilt heavily and internalizing it to the point where she pulled back from the family and had only recently been coming closer again. It would devastate Devon if he couldn't save someone he cared about despite being someone highly trained in tactical situations. Also, Flack didn't know if the family could take another tragedy like this, whether they lost Devon completely or through an emotional and mental withdrawal that could be just as painful. Don sent up a prayer that today wouldn't be the day that they would find out this family's limits.

* * *

**P.S.** Still no guesses about the secret song? Okay, another clue: the song is perfect not only becase Devon is a sailor, but because while he sometimes drops in on New York City, he always leaves and heads back to the Navy, or to put it another way, back to the sea. Hope that helps!


	12. Chapter 11

**AN:** Sorry for the slight delay. Hopefully this new chapter is worth the wait. :) Thanks as always to **Kerry Blue**, she always helps me to make the story that much better for you all.

**Warning!:** There is a good bit of strong language in this chapter. The possibility for that is why I gave this story the rating I gave it, but I thought I should give a special warning for this chapter because it has more than most other chapters in any of my stories. But I do think I only used it where it was organic and necessary to the story.

* * *

Brandy had never in her young life been more scared than she was right now. She had spent her professional career around guns, but had never had them pointed at her in anger before. But almost more than her worries over her own safety, she was concerned about Devon. Early in their rough ride he had been trying to reassure her with his eyes and it had almost worked as it gave her something to concentrate on. But they had hit a particularly nasty pothole at one point and the van they were in seemed to have no shock absorbers whatsoever, so she had to watch helplessly as Devon's head and left shoulder slammed into the side of the van and his eyes rolled back for a few moments from the severe pain. Since then he had still been trying to reassure her with his gaze, but it wasn't as effective because she could clearly see the physical pain he was enduring behind the reassurance.

Finally the van stopped and the side door was pulled open. One goon nearly tore her arm out of its socket while yanking her from the vehicle. Another pointed a switchblade at Devon before giving him a chilling warning. "I'm going to take the tape off your ankles. You try anything, I'll stick this knife in your girlfriend and gut her like a pig, you get me?" Devon nodded with rage and contempt in his eyes and didn't move as the goon used the blade to work through the duct tape around Devon's ankles. Brandy felt in that moment that for the first time she was seeing Devon the warrior and she had no doubts as to how dangerous a warrior he could be.

Normally that thought might have been disconcerting, learning about that darker and harsher side of him after she had come to care for him. But now it brought some comfort as they were ushered into a large house and into an elevator that took them down two floors. Even with him banged up and in severe pain she still felt somehow that she had a chance with Devon by her side.

The elevator doors opened onto a short hallway with them on one end of it and a dead end wall about thirty feet in front of them. There was one door on the right side of the hallway and two on the left. Brandy was suddenly shoved forward with a hand between her shoulder blades. "The door on the right is where we're headed."

She bit back a smart reply about how it was going to be a little hard for her to open the door with her hands taped up together behind her back. As the others moved forward with her, she thought she recognized the smell in the air, and then one of the goons opened the door and her suspicions were confirmed by the noise they hadn't been able to hear previously through the sound-proofed door. They were being taken to a gun range.

They all walked into the room and then waited as the figure in front of them finished the clip he was working on. The range looked to be very high tech, able to be set up as a tactical simulation with good guys and bad guys popping out of various locations as well as working as a simple distance target shooting range. The man they had been brought to finished his clip and hit a button on the wall that brought his paper target whizzing forward as he took his ear protectors off. Turning, he smirked at them.

"Ah, my guests have arrived. I hadn't planned on bringing things to a head quite this soon, but leave it to a Messer to stick their nose where it doesn't belong. You didn't really think you could just ask questions without being found out, did you?"

Brandy looked at Devon, silently hoping he would refrain from ticking off this obvious psycho, but she knew that her wish was unlikely to be granted. Some of her analytical abilities were coming back now that she had managed to push at least a little of her fear down inside of her and she knew that in addition to his anger provoking anything, Devon would try to use words to throw off their captor and get him to make a mistake, regardless of the danger that might mean for Devon himself.

"I didn't care if you knew that I was asking questions. What I did think was that a guy who had managed to avoid detection this long might refrain from doing something so stupid as to kidnap two people from a crowded convention center in broad daylight. The cops will be on you so fast you won't be able to blink and I'll enjoy seeing you head to prison you little prick."

Instead of getting angry at Devon's words, the other man merely raised an eyebrow. "Such vulgarity. But then, what can one expect from a man of your lineage?" He smirked at the look Devon threw him. "Ah, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it? How like your family." The man methodically unrolled the sleeves of his shirt that he had worn up while shooting. "The police, especially your pathetic family, have no clue where you are. As we speak, the van you were transported in is being wiped down and abandoned in a junkyard. And despite all the evidence I've given them, your family has come nowhere close to identifying me, so they won't be showing up in time to be of any help to you. They're always a step behind when it counts, but I have to say that even I am disappointed in their incompetence this time around."

Brandy waited for Devon's reply, but his attention had been snagged by something else. She followed his gaze to the paper target that their captor had been shooting at which she hadn't paid much attention to before. Now she noticed that instead of the generic black and white silhouette that most ranges used, this paper target had the color picture of a woman on it. The woman was very striking with a riot of curly hair around her head. Even more striking was seeing the neat grouping of bullet holes that their captor had put between the woman's eyes.

"Ah, you've recognized my target," the man said, obviously enjoying Devon's astonishment and anger. "Your late aunt is one of my favorite targets. Of course, I've also enjoyed shooting at pictures of your other family members, particularly your bitch of a sister." He cocked his head to the side. "Have you started putting two and two together, or do I still need to spell things out for you?"

Brandy looked back and forth between the two men, totally and completely perplexed. Devon might not need things explained, but she certainly did. But even without understanding what was going on, at the very least she knew that their chances of getting out of this situation unscathed had decreased considerably.

CSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINYCSINY

Devon tensed. This had gone way beyond some random psycho that had a vendetta against his family. No, this had become much more personal than he ever could have imagined. "For some reason, though you seem a little young for it, you have a grudge against my family that seems to stem as far back as the murder of my aunt."

And finally Devon had found the trigger that would set off this psycho. "That _bitch_ was not murdered! She was killed in self-defense! Not that she deserved the quick death she received. No, she deserved a slow, agonizing death like I have planned for you and the rest of your family." The man took a deep breath and attempted to regain his control, which he only somewhat accomplished. "Your aunt disgraced my father and when he went to discuss the error of her ways with her, she arrogantly told him she would put him behind bars for the rest of his life whether he had done anything or not. Then when she decided she would rather just kill him and went for her gun, my father shot her in self-defense. And then your family closed ranks and railroaded my father straight into a death row conviction and will have him killed by the state soon without any evidence to prove anything besides the fact that he had been in the apartment!"

"No evidence? Are you kidding me?" Reasoning with this level of psychosis was insane in its own right, but Devon couldn't help himself. "How about the eye witness testimony of an eleven year old girl who saw your father shoot my aunt in cold blood!"

The psycho sneered at him, his polished demeanor completely gone by this point. "As if your sister ever spoke a word of truth in her life. I didn't need any more evidence of that, but my opinion of her character was only confirmed this past summer when she went on a shooting rampage in Central Park and yet managed to make everyone believe _she_ was the one victimized. She obviously learned well from her aunt."

Devon couldn't believe what he was hearing. How had this guy not been committed to a mental institution long before now? How could he seriously believe that Ella had just randomly started shooting people in Central Park? And, holy God, Devon suddenly remembered what the man was talking about! He remembered rushing to the hospital after Ella was shot, not knowing if she was alive or dead, and then the panic when she disappeared from her hospital room and his frustration at not being able to do anything to help. And then, finally, the emotional wringing his family had gone through around Ella's hospital bed, speaking of things they rarely voiced and reliving the pain of all their memories. Devon had been too young at the time of Stella's death to retain any real memories of his own about that period and its immediate aftermath, besides a general impression of the cloud his family lived under for a long time. But he had been around for the ensuing years when they had all watched Ella float along, a part of their family and yet apart, drifting farther and farther away until that day in Central Park finally started bringing her back.

But now this psycho was jeopardizing that. If her little brother died in even some small part because of her, Devon knew Ella would never forgive herself and would separate from their family completely, and likely forever. And that was something he would not allow to happen if he had any say at all in the matter.

"So, what?" Devon taunted, even as his head pounded with all the repressed memories that had suddenly come back to him. "You send armed thugs after a cripple and a lab tech because you obviously can't handle even the likes of us without muscled goons to back you up? And because you don't have the balls to go after a trained FBI agent, even though she's the one you have the nerve to blame for your father's situation? This is your idea of showing your superiority over my family?" He let all of his disgust and contempt for the insane idiot show on his face.

"_Silence!_" the prick screamed as he strode forward and placed the gun in his hand against Devon's temple. "Shut your fucking mouth before I do it for you with the same gun that silenced that whore you called aunt!" Devon couldn't stop the flicker of surprise he felt and the other man obviously noticed that and smirked as he dug the gun a little further into Devon's skin. "Oh yes, didn't I mention? This weapon in my hand is the same one that ended your worthless aunt's life. It was the start of my collection. My father trusted me and only me with the knowledge of where he had put it. He didn't trust the police to take it as evidence and prove that he had acted in self-defense - and his farce of a trial proved him right - so I kept the gun hidden. And then when I finally had the chance, I…took care of my mother and stepfather and inherited the funds I needed to acquire more artifacts for what I like to call my Justice collection. And Justice is the _only_ name for the weapons that ended the lives of such _scum_ as those who like to call themselves law enforcement when really they are just like the worst of the thugs they hunt and prosecute. They simply cloak themselves in their self-righteousness and the public meekly obeys them, just as lemmings follow each other right over the cliff."

Devon's eyes sparked. The man's anger had finally given him the opportunity he needed. The thugs had backed off enough, obviously believing Devon to be the cripple that he had called himself. And the psycho actually thought that having his hands taped together and a bum shoulder and hip would keep Devon from acting. The man had obviously never met a Navy SEAL before. "In all your psychotic rambling, you forgot one crucial point, scumbag."

The man smirked, making it plain that he felt that he hadn't neglected one single detail. "And what could that be?"

Devon tensed, preparing himself. "That you unloaded your weapon into my aunt's picture and now your gun is out of bullets." And before the man's face could register his reaction to that statement, Devon launched himself forward into the bastard.

* * *

**P.S.** There has been a guess or two about the secret song, but no right answers as of yet, so another clue: the secret song that influenced me while I was writing this story had an impact on the naming of one of the original characters of mine that shows up for the first time in this story. Considering there aren't that many new characters to the series that show up for the first time in this story, it's probably a little obvious who I am talking about, but I'll still be a little vague and mysterious and not come right out and say the name. :) Only one more chapter before the epilogue, so if no one guesses it after this chapter, I will give a very big, very obvious clue (more obvious than the one I just gave!) in the hopes that someone can figure it out!


	13. Chapter 12

**AN:** Another day, another chapter. This is the last one before the epilogue. As always, thanks to all you readers, and thanks to my wonderful friend and beta, **Kerry Blue**.

**Warning:** There is some more swearing in this chapter, though not as much as the last chapter.

**Quick Announcement:** We have a winner for the "Guess the Mystery Song" game! As everyone can see in the reviews, three people actually gave me the correct answer, but **aussietasha** was the only one to give the full name of the song by Looking Glass, _Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)_. **backstagespotlight** and **bichonmom** also gave the correct answer, but they left out the stuff in the parentheses and I made a point of saying in the rules that I wanted the FULL title. However, because I like a challenge, I will let those other two suggest names of songs as well if they wish to and if I can get around to it, I'll try to write stories, or at least chapters, for them. But **aussietasha** is the official winner and gets to pick an oldie song that I will definitely write a story for. **aussietasha**, feel free to PM me or something and we'll get it all worked out. :) And to everyone out there, if you've never heard the song, I highly recommend looking it up somewhere, it's a great song, and it really is perfect for the Devon/Brandy relationship.

On with the show!

* * *

Gun drawn, Don waited against the wall of the hallway for his niece to give the signal for everyone to go forward. The response had been huge when the call went out that a member of their family had been kidnapped. Authorities had already managed to confirm that Devon and Brandy were not at Milton's boat and had obtained a warrant that would allow the police to enter the Milton estate without announcing themselves first. Not that Don or anyone in his family would have remained outside the gates even if they hadn't been granted the warrant.

They had finally caught a little luck when they approached the estate. Just as they had been pulling up they had encountered a vehicle that was turning into the drive and their group quickly surrounded it with multiple law enforcement vehicles. They then pulled the driver and passenger out of the car and separated them for questioning. Clearly motivated more by money than loyalty and eager to save their own skins, both men had been quick to give up all the information they had on the estate's security system and the people that were inside the mansion. It probably didn't hurt that Don and Mac had made it clear to the suspect they talked to that they had no qualms about going beyond the ethical boundaries of their profession to obtain the information they needed. It was likely that Danny and Ella had done the same with the other suspect.

After getting through the gate and entering the house using the security codes that they had been so helpfully provided with, they headed downstairs to the underground firing range that the idiots from the car had indicated Devon and Brandy had been taken to. Pushing down his instinct to be at the front, Don had held back somewhat to allow Ella and the rest of the kids to take the lead along with the other younger officers and agents. But Don and Mac and Danny and Lindsay weren't about to wait outside. Even Sheldon had followed them inside, though he was hanging back in the stairwell with Deb and the other law enforcement personnel that couldn't fit in the hallway. Hawkes hadn't managed to borrow a bulletproof vest to protect himself like the rest of them had, and besides, he was here more for moral and medical support than to provide additional firepower.

Not that Don was really needed for additional firepower either. Even without any of their family members, they had enough weaponry in this hallway to take on a small army let alone one psycho and his handful of thugs, and all of that collected power was currently coiled tight waiting for the order to spring. Ella was the one poised to give that order, listening through the crack in the not-quite-closed door. Don could hear the voices coming from the other side of the door to the gun range, but he couldn't make out the words. However, while Ella's face never changed, everyone else near enough to the door to clearly hear what was being said had tensed up considerably, which was an amazing feat considering how tense they had all been already. But Don couldn't worry about what was being said. For now all he could worry about was what could happen in the next few minutes, no, few seconds. He watched Ella's raised fist, ready to enter a tactical situation like he hadn't done in longer than he cared to admit. What kind of fool was he to be doing this, family or no family?

And then he didn't have any more time to think about how much of a fool he was because Ella had started a silent count with her raised hand.

Three. Two. One. Fist. _Go_.

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Brandy's brain was spinning with how much had happened in the last few seconds, which had stretched into what felt like several lifetimes. Devon and the psycho were yelling at each other, and then all of a sudden Devon was launching himself at the other man. Brandy didn't even take the time to think. She just took Devon's actions as a cue and turned to put a knee into the nearest thug. The man fell to the floor writhing in pain, but Brandy didn't have time to enjoy her victory because the other thug hit her across the face with the back of his hand and she fell hard to the floor. She was still seeing stars when the room suddenly filled with sound and activity as what seemed like hundreds of people streamed in shouting things like "Drop the weapon!" and "Freeze!" and "Police!" Before Brandy could blink all the stars away, a familiar face was leaning over her. She tried to put a name with the face and made her best guess. "Ron?"

The man smiled. "It's Don. You okay, Charles?" he asked as he used a pocket knife to slice the tape around her wrists.

Brandy started to nod her head but that made it hurt. Well, hurt more than it already did. She was about to ask where Devon was, but as Don helped her sit up she saw for herself how Devon was doing and it wasn't good.

Outside of her and Don and those that were handcuffing the thugs, everyone else was frozen in a horrible tableau. Evidently the unloaded gun the psycho had held to Devon's head hadn't been the only one he had within easy reach because now he held a different weapon. Like the first one, he had this one pointed at Devon and Brandy wouldn't bet that this one too was unloaded. Every law enforcement person in the room that wasn't dealing with the thugs had their weapons drawn and pointed at the psycho and nobody was yelling anything now since they were in the proverbial Mexican standoff.

Ell Messer was the first to break the silence. "Put the gun down, Milton. Your little game is over."

"I will admit that things didn't play out as I had planned, but we are far from done here, Daniella." Brandy felt a shiver go down her spine at the way he said the agent's name and she didn't know how Ell Messer managed to not show even a sliver of discomfort.

"I don't know what you think can happen here. You may think me incompetent, but I can guarantee you this. I hit what I shoot at, and if I so much as see your trigger finger twitch a millimeter, I will put a hole in your forehead and blow what little brains you have out the back of your skull."

Brandy sucked in a breath. Ell Messer seemed to have lost the calm, cool demeanor she was known for in the Bureau. She could be as intimidating as hell, but she usually did that by her mere presence rather than harsh words. If even half the stories that Brandy had heard about her were true, she had faced multiple situations like this and calmly talked her way out of them without breaking a sweat. And yet, no one seemed willing to break in and take the lead from Ell who was obviously not in control of the situation. Seeing the look that was in the eyes of the psycho, Brandy couldn't stay quiet. He looked like he was ready to die if he could kill Devon and make this family suffer more pain than it already had, and Brandy could not just sit there and let it happen.

"Wait!" Some turned to look at Brandy as she struggled to stand up, only able to do so after Don gave her a hand up. Most didn't move a muscle. Like Ell had said, even an involuntary muscle twitch at this point could send bullets flying.

"Brandy, back off!" Devon ordered, never taking his eyes from the gun pointed at his head.

"No, listen, Milton, right? Milton, before you do anything rash, listen to me."

"It's Palmer. Carter Palmer," the psycho said, momentarily flicking his gaze in Brandy's direction before returning his eyes to Ell's relentless stare. "Milton was my stepfather's name. I only took it for legal purposes so that bitches like this one wouldn't connect me to my father and keep me from doing what I needed to do."

"Okay, Carter Palmer it is." Brandy wasn't about to debate a psycho on what name he wanted to be called. "Look, I don't think I know everything going on here, but I do know this. You don't really want to shoot Devon."

"Don't I? He's her brother, and while I had planned on living to see this bitch suffer from the choices she has made, the consequences of putting an innocent man on death row, I can resign myself to dying if it means knowing that I will be leaving chaos in my wake, if I know that she will be dealing with some of the same pain that _I_ have lived with all these years without my father."

Brandy rushed back in before Ell could scoff at the idea that she had put an innocent man on death row. "I'm not saying you don't want to kill him for your revenge. No, I'm saying that you don't want to kill him because in doing that you will also be killing your father."

"What?" She had his full attention now. The psycho still had his gun trained on Devon, his trigger finger mere millimeters away from sending a bullet straight into the brain of the man Brandy had come to care so much about in such a short period of time, but now he was looking at her instead of Devon or Ell. She would take her victories where they came and continued to talk, just letting the words roll off her tongue before her brain had really even consciously processed them.

"Your father is on death row, right? And I think you said that he is slated to die soon." She took a deep breath. "But if you were to surrender your weapon right now, if you were to allow yourself to be taken alive today which won't happen if you pull that trigger, you would be around to claim that your father has been in on your plans. A part of your whole conspiracy to collect these guns and eventually kidnap me and Devon and to kill members of the Messer family."

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Charles?" When he said this, Devon's Uncle Don had turned to Brandy in a way such that only she could see his face, and in contrast to his words and tone, his eyes told her she was on the right track and should keep going.

"I'm saving everyone's life," she said indignantly, using Don's words as he had probably intended, to give her a way to seemingly separate herself from the Messer family and align herself with Carter Palmer/Milton and his plight. She took a few steps forward, ignoring the fierce pounding behind her temples. "I don't know the details of your family's situation Carter, but all the work you've put into this whole plan says how much you love and care about your father. That alone makes me think that maybe you're right, that maybe your father was innocent and he was railroaded into a death row conviction. I promise you that I will do everything in my power to help you rectify any injustices that might have been done. But first you have to do your part. You see, if you surrender right now and tell everyone that your father was part of your plan, then he will be indicted in your trial as a co-conspirator. Which means that they will have to postpone his execution so that he can be prosecuted for these new charges. And even if he is found guilty of these new charges along with you, the appeals stemming from the new trial could probably keep him alive for the rest of his natural life."

She took a breath as she added the cherry on top. "And if you're telling the truth, if your father was improperly convicted, maybe we can get his initial conviction overturned. Then he could apply for time served against the new charges and there is a chance, a small chance, that he could become a free man. But that is only even remotely possible if you put the gun down now without firing a shot, because otherwise you will probably be killed ten times over, and then your father will have no way to postpone his execution and give himself enough time to turn things around. My voice alone won't be enough. I can't do this without you. So please, for the justice you so obviously crave, please put the gun down."

Carter Milton looked back and forth between Brandy and Ell, back and forth, back and forth. Something in Ell's eyes changed the look in his and he seemed to come to a decision. "I think you may have a point. Now that I think about it, this bitch probably doesn't have enough human feelings in her to care whether or not I shoot her brother. She just wants the excuse to kill me and therefore also kill my father. But you know what? I won't let her get away with it." And just like that he took his finger off of the trigger, put his free hand up in the air and slowly leaned over to lay the weapon on the ground. As soon as the weapon was out of his hand, a SWAT team member came forward to grab the psycho's hands and force them behind his back before handcuffing them. "Remember! You promised! You will help me free my father!"

As soon as the psycho was restrained, Brandy rushed forward to help Ell bring Devon to his feet. She glanced down at the psycho, as she would always refer to him, where he was now facedown on the concrete floor with a police officer's knee in his back. "The only promise I made was to rectify any injustices that might have occurred. And as far as I'm concerned, there was no injustice in your father's death sentence, and I think he deserves to die for the crimes that he has committed." She then turned away, tuning out the psycho's enraged rantings as she and Ell helped Devon limp out of the gun range. Her head was pounding, her wrists hurt from being bound and Devon was obviously in a lot more pain than she was. But none of that really mattered because they were alive. She didn't care if she had sounded like a fool in there, because they were alive and the psycho was handcuffed and in police custody which meant that everything was okay. Or at least, they now had the opportunity to make everything okay. And that was all that mattered she kept telling herself, that they were alive and had the opportunity to make everything okay.


	14. Epilogue

**AN:** Again, sorry for the delay. Real life has a habit of getting in the way. Hopefully, the length of this epilogue will make up for that a little bit. :)

So far, the only song title I've gotten from any of the three winners of my mystersy song game has been _Bridge Over Troubled Waters_, and awesomely enough, that title fits great with a story idea I have. Unfortunately, I have another story that I want to do first, so it won't be the very next one I write and post, but it is planned for the future. The next chaptered story in this AU will be Shayna's story, and I'll tease you with the song title I will be using: _Fire and Rain_ by James Taylor. But I will not promise when I will start posting that because it is far, far (far, far) from being finished, and I don't want to start posting anything that could take months again to finish. But it is something you can look forward to eventually and no one has to worry that _Everybody Plays the Fool_ is my last story planned for this AU. :)

Well, on with the story! I hope you enjoy the ending to _Everybody Plays the Fool_! Thanks to all who have read and those who have reviewed, and as always, thanks to my awesome friend and beta, **Kerry Blue**, without whom this story wouldn't be half as polished.

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_A crisp, clear night the day after Thanksgiving, New York City…_

Brandy sipped what little was left of the champagne in her glass and leaned back against the support pillar on the outskirts of the large ballroom, just taking everything in. The crowd was huge and she was pretty sure fire marshals were holding people back at the entrance because they had exceeded the cavernous room's capacity.

Well, it might not be actual fire marshals since Brandy had learned awhile back that they functioned differently in NYC than they did in other places. Then again, since many of them were likely here anyway as invited guests, maybe they were pitching in and helping with crowd control in between enjoying the large buffet or dancing in the middle of the room to the music that the DJ was playing. It seemed to Brandy like Ana and Jack had invited to their wedding reception half of New York City. At the very least they must have extended invitations to the entire NYPD, NYFD, and the New York offices of the FBI and ATF and maybe even the DEA. Oh, and the New York City Medical Examiner's Office. And the City Council. And some of Dominic Messer's baseball friends. She didn't envy the security types who were probably experiencing apoplexy at having all of these high profile and important people in one place.

It was such a stark contrast from how the wedding itself had been. As Ana had explained it a few days before, she and Jack wanted a small, intimate wedding that was just about pledging their lives together in front of their families and closest friends. There had been no more than fifty people in the beautiful church that Devon had told Brandy was where they had spent most Sunday mornings growing up.

At the thought of Devon, Brandy sighed. She couldn't see his blindingly white dress uniform in the crowd around her, but he was never far from her thoughts. While she had had plenty of contact with him during the few weeks since their near death experience, there had always been others present which prevented them from having any kind of substantive discussion about the future of their relationship. Or whether there was a future to their relationship at all, since Shayna had informed Brandy before the ceremony this morning that Devon had received orders the night before to report back to his home base in California within the next 48 hours. Devon wasn't recovered enough to be sent out on any serious missions, but the Navy evidently thought he was well enough to come back for some limited duty.

And therein lay the problem. Devon was flying to California in a matter of hours and Brandy was staying here in New York City. They had known each other for such a short amount of time that the separation shouldn't have been that big of a deal, but Brandy felt a sharp stab of pain in the region of her heart whenever she thought about it. Subconsciously, that was likely the reason she had been trying to subtly pull back from Devon and his family for the last week or so. She had claimed a need to retreat a little from the media spotlight, and the intense scrutiny she and Devon and his family had been under since the kidnapping made her excuse a pretty legitimate one. While the press and the public usually had a pretty short attention span, it was unlikely that such a juicy story would be dropped anytime in the foreseeable future, what with the psycho pushing for a quick trial date and his father being scheduled to die in a couple of months despite the attempts of the psycho to use Brandy's "advice" about claiming his father as a co-conspirator.

But none of that was the real reason Brandy had strived for some distance. Despite the persistent press, she had enjoyed being drawn into the circle of Devon's family. They were a group of amazing people and Brandy was fast becoming very good friends with Shayna. She could even remember most of their names now, especially his Uncle Don. Though Brandy would still call him Ron once in awhile to joke with him.

No, the real reason was that she knew Devon would be heading to San Diego eventually and that it wouldn't be a temporary separation. As she spent more time with Devon and watched his eyes as he talked about his career in the Navy, regaling his family with hilarious tales of his job and the mischief he and his friends often got into, she could see his love for his profession. It was a look she understood because she was sure she looked the same way when she was excited about something to do with her job. And it was a look many in Devon's family shared, people who had devoted decades of their life to their chosen careers. But their professions kept them in one place while Devon's was currently taking him to the other side of the country and then off to who knows where in the world.

She had briefly thought of returning to San Diego, too, but her career in New York City was blossoming and starting over in her hometown would be a step back. She knew that Devon would hate the idea of adversely affecting her career, just as much as she would hate it if she were ever to hold him back from his. Besides, being based in the same city wasn't a guarantee that they would see each other much anyway, since he would frequently be away on missions or otherwise fully occupied with his work.

It was an impossible situation, an unlikely set of circumstances upon which to build a lasting relationship. And that was why she had pulled back, why she had claimed work as the reason why she didn't attend the wedding rehearsal and dinner yesterday. She did have plenty of work to do, considering that part of the whirlwind of the last few weeks had been her former supervisor being promoted to fill a sudden hole at FBI headquarters in D.C. and Brandy being offered his position based largely upon her work on the case that resulted in her own kidnapping. She hadn't thought she had done anything that spectacular, but enough people had evidently spoken up on her behalf to make the promotion happen. She was taking the increased responsibility very seriously since she was rather young for the position, and as such it wasn't uncommon to find her working extra hours, though most probably would have thought it fine for her to take the Thanksgiving holiday off. But her parents were busy conducting business on the other side of the world and only had time for a brief phone call, and Brandy needed the work to explain why she didn't attend the rehearsal that she had been invited to.

Early Friday morning she had awakened to a pounding on her apartment door that turned out to be Shayna. Devon's cousin wasted no time informing Brandy that she was _not_ missing the wedding, and that she was to get ready and come with her to the church where the rest of the female members of the family had already started gathering. Brandy had opened her mouth to argue, but quickly shut it when Shayna shot her a look that made it clear no excuses would work this time.

So Brandy had gone to the church figuring that she wouldn't have to interact much with Devon, as she would be with the women prior to the ceremony, and would then watch from a pew seat while he stood up front as part of the wedding party. And she had been right, she hadn't exchanged more than two words with Devon all day. Just a quick greeting after the ceremony in the receiving line before the wedding party had been ushered back into the sanctuary for pictures and a man whose name rhymed with spaghetti had pulled Brandy along with his family to the reception. She realized that had been part of an organized plan to make sure that she didn't skip the reception when the man told her that he was Ell Messer's boyfriend's partner in the NYPD. He had eventually admitted that the family had charged him with making sure Brandy didn't bail out on "a party like New York had never seen," as Ana had put it.

And it was certainly that, Brandy had to admit. She watched the large group of people dancing to the slow song currently being played over the loudspeakers, her eyes finally snagging on someone she knew. Devon's Uncle Don was dancing with a woman who Brandy was pretty sure she remembered as being Jack Dent's mother. She idly watched the couple, letting her thoughts drift from their previous seriousness and completely missing the figure in a blindingly white dress uniform coming up behind her.

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Don slowly danced with Deb Dent as he gazed across the ballroom and noticed his nephew approaching the ballistics tech that had captured so much of his attention. The poor guy was so far gone, and yet within a few short hours would have to fly three thousand miles away from the object of his affection.

Not that Don was in a much better situation. He wasn't as nearly far gone as his nephew, but he was dealing with his own separation issues. Deb had gone back to Washington not long after Devon and Brandy were rescued and she had kept in only sporadic touch with Don since then, and yet he still felt an incredibly strong attraction to this woman when he saw her again at the rehearsal yesterday. And now she was in his arms and he didn't particularly care to let her go.

The woman in question looked up at him, cocking her head slightly to the side. "What's on your mind?"

He sighed, deciding to be upfront about things. "I was just thinking that my nephew and I are in a similar situation. He's flying off to California soon and leaving Brandy Charles behind, while you'll be going back to Washington within the next few days and leaving me here. Of course, the distance between New York and D.C. is a lot easier to handle than the distance between here and San Diego."

She considered him for a moment before tearing her gaze away to look over his shoulder. "I've, uh, been having some thoughts about that." She took a deep breath. "I've been thinking seriously these last few weeks about stepping back a little within the DEA." Her gaze wandered over to where Don knew Ana and Jack were standing, chatting with some guests. "Recent events have led me to reevaluate a few things in my life and I came to realize I've missed out on too much with my son. I know I could make our relationship better and still keep my current position, but I've been getting tired of the constant politics that have to be played at my level in a federal agency anyway and looking to find a way out of that nonsense. So, I put out feelers to see if it would be acceptable to the powers that be if I were to move back a step or two, maybe to the head of the New York field office position since the woman currently in that slot is retiring soon, and it seems like that could work out as a possibility. Jack seemed happy that I wanted to be more of a part of his life when I told him last night of my plans." She finally looked back up at Don. "This means that I would be around more often, if you'd like to go out sometime. You know, maybe spend some time together when we're not surrounded by a million people waiting to see if we'll start yelling at each other again."

Don grinned. "Sounds good to me. Better than good. And even though I'll be busier in the new year, what with Mac deciding to step down as Chief of Detectives and me being appointed Interim Chief, I'm sure I can find some time to liaise with the DEA's office."

"So it's true what I've heard?" his dance partner inquired. "Jack had mentioned the possibility awhile back and I've heard some rumors that it had become official, but I didn't know for sure."

"It's official," Don confirmed. "Mac submitted his retirement paperwork late last week and he will step down effective the first Monday in January. Just one of many changes in our family lately." And it was. These changes had mostly all been inevitable, the retirement of Mac and the marriage of one of the kids and serious relationships for some of the others, but Don had never anticipated that they would come in such quick succession. He hadn't quite decided how he felt about taking over Mac's position, even temporarily, but for now he wasn't going to think about that. For now, all he wanted to think about was the woman in his arms and the celebration going on around them for one of the happiest moments his family had had in a long time. And as he caught another glance of his Navy nephew, he sent up a quick prayer that things could work out for Devon as well as they seemed to be shaping up for Don himself.

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As Devon approached Brandy he hoped he wasn't playing the fool, that her recent retreat hadn't been meant to indicate to him that she wasn't as in to him as he was to her. But he needed to know for sure before flying back to California whether she felt anything like he was feeling, whether their fledgling romantic relationship stood a chance.

And then her head turned and their gazes locked and he knew that he had better than a chance. If he was interpreting her look correctly, she was feeling everything that he was. But before he did something rash based on that gut feeling, he reined himself in and tried the slow approach. "Hey."

"Hi." Their gazes stayed locked for a few more moments until she looked down at her empty glass, holding it in both hands. When he noticed the slight tremble there he decided to throw all his resolutions out the window and go for broke. It wasn't like he had a lot of time to spare.

"So, I was wondering, have you been avoiding me these last few days because you seriously had a lot of work you just had to do, or is it because you wanted to let me down gently and not hurt my feelings by having to reject any advances I made?"

Her eyes slid briefly closed before she slumped back against the support pillar and looked at him. "Neither. I avoided you because I'm afraid my heart is already too involved, but I can't imagine how anything could successfully come of it all, what with you being three thousand miles away soon. Or even more miles when you're back on full duty and flying around the world. I figured I would try to let _myself_ down gently."

His breath caught, but he managed to ask his next question. "And how is that going?"

She looked off to the left. "Not well at all."

He gently took her chin in his hand and turned her gaze back towards his. "Ah, Brandy, you really have no idea, do you?"

Brandy looked up at him, her eyes giving away all of her uncertainty. "About what?"

His thumb moved slowly over her chin. "About the fact that you're the first thing that has ever made me even briefly consider giving up the Navy anytime before I hit retirement age." He smiled. "I love my family dearly, but missing them has never been a strong enough pull to bring me back to New York permanently. And yet, now I have the strong urge to lose my reenlistment papers when my time comes up in a little over a year. That is, if you think you could possibly wait that long to have more than phone calls and e-mails and the occasional short visit."

A tear ran down her cheek and he caught it with his thumb as she started to speak. "If you're serious about this, about us, Devon Messer, then I can certainly handle a year of what you described." She straightened against the pillar. "But I don't want you to make any final decisions about your career right now. We barely know each other at this point. I would hate for you to give up a career that you love for someone you figure out too late isn't compatible with you after all."

Devon didn't think that they would be incompatible. In fact, he had recently caught himself fantasizing about a distant future wherein they had made their relationship more permanent and built a home together. But he knew that now was not the time to voice that opinion. Instead, he would heed her words and they would go as slowly as their separation would require. He hoped that time would show him to be right, that this thing between them was something special that could last through not just this upcoming separation, but through anything that came at them from here on out.

They were abruptly brought back to the party when Dominic walked up. "What are you two lovebirds doing over here? You're missing the whole party!"

Kaile sent them an apologetic look. "Sorry guys. I tried to distract him, but he wanted to come over here and play the big brother."

Devon rolled his eyes. "It's not your fault, Kaile, that my brother is an annoying busybody."

Dominic pointed a finger at his younger brother. "I'm going to let that go since you're leaving so soon, but don't think that I will forget you said that."

Devon was about to make a crack about how he was so scared of his older brother's "threat," but Ella walked up with JD before he could say anything. "Are you two seriously getting into it in the middle of Ana's wedding reception?"

"Of course they are," Shayna said, joining their group. "Why should now be different than any other time?"

Devon sighed in mock exasperation and looked over at an amused Brandy. "As much as I don't want to, I have to ask, are you sure you aren't having any second thoughts? Because I get to fly away from these people soon, but you're stuck here with them."

Shayna latched onto his comments like a bloodhound on a scent. "Do I take that to mean that you guys are going to start dating despite the distance issue?"

Brandy looked up at him and Devon's heart skipped a couple beats at the heat in her gaze. "Devon wants to give the long-distance thing a try, so if you all don't object," she said wryly, "yes, we are going to try a relationship."

Dominic reached over and slapped Devon on the back. "Great! And hey, maybe we'll have to get _you_ a pool table too sometime in the near future."

Devon raised an eyebrow. "I don't think we're anywhere near that stage. In fact, you're much closer to that than we are. But speaking of pool tables, did you get everything set up?"

"Of course I did," Dominic replied. "I got a call awhile ago from the moving company that everything has been handled. When Ana and Jack get back from their honeymoon, they'll barely be able to open the front door because of the thing, but it's inside."

Devon took pity on the obviously confused Brandy and briefly explained. "To make a long story short, when we were kids, well, Shayna and I were kids and the others were teenagers, our whole family was eating out at some place with pool tables and our Uncle Don kept saying things to my parents, making jokes about the pool tables. Eventually one of us caught on-"

"I think it was Ana actually," Dominic interjected. "Which makes it only right that she's the first to get one of her own."

"Right, so Ana caught on and realized that my parents had a, uh, history with pool tables. And she immediately started saying things like 'Ewww!' because she was at the age that thinking about that in relation to your parents is gross."

"It's still gross to me," Shayna joked. "I continue to maintain that I came by stork."

"And thus it became one of those epic family jokes," Devon finished. "So, what better gift could we all get Ana than her very own pool table to facilitate the, uh, growth in the family that she has said she and Jack plan on working towards in the near future?" He pointed a thumb at his older brother. "It sure helped our parents because we think that Dom here was conceived on one. According to our aunt and uncles, the table that our parents once owned was gone by the time Ana and Ella were born, but they still had it when Dominic was--"

"Okay, okay, enough, enough," Dominic pleaded as everyone laughed and he grimaced at the thought of his own conception. He waved down a nearby waiter carrying a full tray of glasses filled with champagne and passed them around to everyone in the group. "A toast! To the growth of our family, whether through pool tables or weddings or kidnappings." Dom managed to not spill any of his champagne when Kaile elbowed him in the side. He recovered and smoothly continued talking. "And may our growth bring happiness as we continue to welcome new people into our very odd and crazy family," he said, motioning to both JD and Brandy when he referenced the new members of their group.

Devon rolled his eyes at his brother's toast, but drank anyway because he agreed with the sentiment of it. He very much hoped that the newcomers to the family continued to bring as much happiness as Jack already had for Ana. Brandy had already brought pleasure and happiness into Devon's life like he had never felt before and their relationship had barely started. Despite all the hardships and crazy psychos his family had had to endure in the past year, he would be a fool to not give thanks on this Thanksgiving weekend for the great and wonderful things he had in his life. As he put his arm around the woman he had come to care so much about, he could only hope that this next year could be filled with more of the happiness and less of the hardship.


End file.
